ZEIGLER

i took this photo right after my grandfather's funeral, moments before the largest man i’ve ever seen was yelling at me for trespassing, claiming i could be an agri-terrorist about to drop an AI bomb on his turkeys.

karl and i had pulled into the open gate of his turkey farm, parking in the entrance. i ran up to the turkey houses to photograph the bleach-white birds in captivity. they looked alien, sickly. a couple more weeks and they'd be fat enough for slaughter.

it wasn’t five minutes later a pickup truck came careening down the dirt road headed for us. i knew instantly what that meant.

the farmer. oh fuck.

i walked back to the car, heart racing. he pulled up right behind it, blocking us in. he jumped out, spitting mad.

he was yelling at me in the way only physical violence can follow. i saw my options were to run or apologize and hope to calm him down. he was going on about how i could be with the press or PETA or planning to throw in a diseased turkey to ruin his flock. his livelihood was at stake here. it felt like whatever i said next could make the difference between whether the gun he tucked in his wasteband running out the door would stay there or not.

i promised to delete my photos and leave his property. that took him from a 10 to a 7 but he was still ranting and we were still his captives. i was concerned, but overall embarrassed to have landed in the situation in the first place.

karl wisely remained in the car.

i explained that i grew up learning to drive on these dirt roads with my grandfather, jerry zeigler, and i was in town for his funeral. this road meant a lot to me and i used to pass his turkey farm all the time. when i said jerry’s name he went from a 7 to a 2. he dropped his shoulders and said

jerry is - was - your grandfather? oh man.. i didn’t know he passed. i'm real sorry to hear that

the air was cleared and we were on our way by the skin of our teeth.

as if it was a final gift, jerry's reputation got us out of a sticky one that day, and not for the first time.

the funeral was a run-of-the-mill small town baptist service by most respects other than my mother's lighthearted eulogy which truly encapsulated the man he was and got everybody laughing about his quirks. i got to appreciate what an eloquent speaker she is while she recalled stories we could all relate to.

she and my stepdad, art, passed out york peppermint patties for everyone at the start of her speech - a treat we all knew well. jerry kept a bowl of them in his cabinet and always seemed to have one ready to hand to a visitor or grandkid. the taste transports me instantly to his farm in darlington, sc.

almost everyone in that room learned to drive on the dirt road behind his house with jerry in the passenger seat. for some of us jerry started us driving as soon as we could sit in his lap and see over the steering wheel, myself included.

we all had benefited from his pecans, generosity, and nuggets of wisdom that started with
listen here, son...

when he was ready to leave somewhere he would stand straight up and walk out the door saying
come see us, bye.

he disconnected his landline because he was getting multiple calls a week and it was simply too much. he was the hardest working man i've ever met and there's not a thing on this world he couldn't fix. there's a resilience in WWII era men like him that seems to have been discontinued.

as the pastor took the podium, professing we would all see jerry again in heaven, it struck me - i may have been one of the few people at my granddad‘s funeral who actually knew he’s dead. entirely.

as jerry would say, he had demised. the entire funeral was about how god was building house zeigler in heaven and that’s where jerry was. i’ll give the pastor this - the analogy worked well for a punch line about granddad renovating heaven because he had renovated every room in his home a minimum of two times each. all by his own hand.

it felt like the small group of us who aren’t religious had to keep a secret to ourselves. if the others found out he was dead and not in heaven they would be devastated.

the religious attendees were forcing down their feelings of sorrow with the hollow promise of afterlife that makes you feel foolish for weeping. it’s an odd thing to sit in a room full of people trying their hardest to turn their minds and faces away from the facts while their bodies beg to grieve and crumple in despair.

i have to wonder - if they were true believers, would they not be thrilled to death that someone they love finally got to go to the good place where you don’t have to work or pay taxes or take cholesterol pills? but no - i saw their puffy eyes and heavy hearts. they may try to cover it up, but they knew.

i’ve heard richard dawkins pressed to answer this question:

well, if there is no afterlife or a soul to transcend death, how can you possibly bear the weight of losing a loved one? that must be horrifying?

dawkins’ answer resonates with me:
yes. every death is an absolute tragedy.
it rips me apart because this is all we have.
every moment of life is precious, miraculous.

eating a meal at his home with my family afterwards was dear and familiar yet his vacancy had a character on it's own. the chair he wasn't sitting it. the screen door he wasn't walking through on his way to mend something. the empty gloves on his workbench.

i sat on the swing with karl in a gazebo he built, wishing he could have spent more time with her and wondering what he'd really think about my life.

after everyone had eaten, we cleaned up and i went to photograph his old workshop with my uncle. i came back in the house to find karl washing my grandmother’s dishes, talking with my mother and aunt. the setting sun poured through the kitchen window. i was captured by the serenity of the moment.

yes, this is a life worth living - my only life before the lights go out.
may i do my best not to miss it.

rest in quiet peace, granddad. you are missed.