My parents were very loving but strict. Perhaps because of this the sweet person of my grandfather was the most strong remembrance of my childhood. He was tall and strong but with enormous joy and kindness. My grandpa was, at the same time, grandpa and friend, a source of endless joys and memories. To him I owe a debt that only God could pay. Today I think that my grandfather should be descended from chinese, because I never saw anyone endowed with so great patience, specially with children. When we passed the limit, he just smiled and said that if we don't come back home my parents would be angry (he never).
One day he bought a donkey so tame tath even irritated us by its calm. In two or three cousins we mount the donley (dressed as cowboys) and my grandpa left us through the city, went to the store first, then to the butcher, after to the bar, when he drink a shot of cachaça (brazilian popular whiskey) and return under a scorching sun, drawing the donkey and carrying his purchases, as if he was walking in the shadows of an european garden. What a fantastic man, for me he was an example of person that I try to emulate.
But what else he do to leave us happy was to support us in our darkest moments. Reached the point of, without leaving us pampered, leave us outside, saying to go to the church and take us to the circus, that come to the city only one time per year and that had been prohibited for us by our parents. He understand us as nobody could ever and think only in our happyness. The amazing is that he never was tired or irritated, even when I spent several minutes shaking over his crossed legs, as if they were my horse Spark (name of the horse of a movie cowboy at that time). He was a outstanding grandfather and I never forget him!
His death hit me so deeply and painfully that I had to be taken to an hospital to make a treatment and regain my strenght, now I understand that everything on this planet follows the will of God and that everything, even the tragedies, are done for our own good, but I still get sad when I think in the death of my so dear grandfather.
I can still see him sitting in his chair on the porch, smoking his straw cigarettes, laughin and telling to his grandchildren about his thrilled adventures when he was a cowboy (it's truth), telling us how he cross the Corumbá River mounted on an ox, because at that time don't have a bridge there and because an ox swim better than an horse! Nostalgia is like a thorn stuck in our heart, sometimes we forget it for a while, but usually it hurts us too much...
Text from the book "The Roofs of Ipameri" by Lupércio Mundim
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