The Door to His Heart

Have you ever had someone you loved, and you wanted them to love you the same way, but they couldn’t?  For me, it was Grandpa. No matter how many doors I tried to open to get inside his heart, I couldn’t find the right one. I kept searching.


Grandpa could have been described as standoffish. He was guarded in his approach to humankind—wary of others until he knew their motives. Maybe it was because he had been a cop. He’d seen too much of human nature and the havoc it could cause—maybe he’d investigated too many murder scenes. I don’t know. I only knew him as Grandpa, and I loved him because he was. 

 

Maybe he offered less love, but I didn’t calibrate my love for him, based on the love he had for me.

 

Now that I look back on his life, I think he endured the cultural and global struggles of his generation. He was keenly aware of circumstances and was constantly examining the data. He analyzed evidence and was naturally suspicious. He created Oregon State’s first crime lab. His role in life seemed to be stopping bad guys. Maybe it also robbed him of the joy that he deserved when he wasn’t being a cop.


 

In 1950, the FBI sent him to Germany to establish a national police force—during Germany’s post war redevelopment. This was ten years prior to the Berlin Wall being erected, but the dividing forces were already at work within Germany. 


Maybe after seeing the war’s aftermath and the threat of communism, it hardened him further. Maybe it made trusting people even harder. Maybe my perception of Grandpa’s lack of love, was more of his concern that the world I’d been born into would get even worse. I’m only speculating.



But he loved my grandma faithfully and I never saw an old man work harder when Mom needed help building her log cabin. 


Then both my grandma and my mom died. The light dimmed in his world and the doors to his heart seemed to be shut tight. 



A few years later, my family moved to Mom’s cabin and I knocked on another door of Grandpa’s heart—the door that had helped build a cabin. I wrote him a long letter. He called me. I wrote him again. I sent pictures of the cabin that he’d so faithfully labored on. He called once more, then again. We’d found a connection—a small cabin that love built. 


He died eight months later while visiting my aunt. In his suitcase, my aunt found the pictures I’d sent him, and the last letter I’d written.


The door to his heart had opened just enough to let me learn that love isn’t the same for everyone—we love differently. And that's still love.


So, if you’re knocking on the door to someone’s heart, keep trying—there are lessons to be learned as you wait outside. And then, if the door opens, maybe you’ll see love in a new way.



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