Part 2: My Grandfather Was Dying of Lung Cancer and Asked to Teach Me One Last Lesson — He Took Me to His Garage and We Sat in Silence for 3 Hours
I want to tell you who my grandfather was at the dinner table.
He was a loud man. He talked with his hands. He laughed from his chest. He could tell a forty-five-minute story about a single bad weather night on Lake Superior in 1987 that would have you on the edge of your seat and laughing and frightened in equal measure. He swore casually around adults. He did not swear in front of me. He cooked the spaghetti every Sunday. He had a specific way of folding the napkins at the table that he had learned from his own grandmother in 1962.
He was also, in another room, a quiet man.
He read poetry. He owned a battered paperback copy of Mary Oliver’s American Primitive that he kept on the nightstand next to his bed for the last fifteen years of his life. He had a set of fine-point pens and a small leather journal he wrote in for forty-five minutes every morning before sunrise. He kept a sketchpad on the workbench in his garage and would draw small careful pencil sketches of birds he saw on his rides — herons, redwing blackbirds, sandhill cranes — that nobody in the family even knew he did until after he died.
He was a man with two voices.
The loud one for the world. The quiet one for himself.
I think most people who knew him only knew the loud one.
I was seven years old, and I knew both.
I knew the loud one because I went to his house every other Saturday for the first seven years of my life. I knew the quiet one because — for some reason I will never understand — he had let me into the garage at the age of four to sit on a stool while he worked on the Heritage. He had not talked much in there. He had let me hand him wrenches when I was old enough. He had let me sit and watch.
I think he had been getting me ready for the day in 2018 since I was four years old without either of us knowing.
The phone call from my grandfather to my mother came on June 7th, 2018.
He had been diagnosed in December. He had been in chemotherapy from January to April. The cancer had been stage four when they found it. The doctors had told him in May that there were no more options to try.
He told my mother on the phone, “Marie. Bring Caleb on Saturday. Just for the afternoon. I want to teach him a thing.”
My mother said, “Pop. What thing?”
He said, “It’s a thing. I’ll teach him. You don’t need to know.”
My mother said, “Pop. Is it about — “
He said, “Marie. Bring him at noon. I’ll have him back to you by four.”
She brought me on Saturday June 9th.
We pulled into his driveway at 11:47 a.m.
He was sitting on the front porch with a glass of iced tea. He had lost about thirty pounds since Christmas. He was wearing a faded gray Lake Erie Riders MC t-shirt and old jeans. He was barefoot. He waved at us from the porch.
My mother walked me up.
She said, “Pop. I’ll be back at four.”
He said, “Make it five, sweetheart. We might run long.”
She kissed his cheek.
She kissed mine.
She drove away.
He looked at me.
He said, “Buddy. Come on inside. We’re gonna go to the garage.”
I followed him through the kitchen, through the back door, across the small concrete patio, and into the attached garage.
The Heritage was parked in the center bay. Cobalt blue. Polished. Quiet.
The garage smelled the way it always smelled — motor oil, old leather, the faint salt of forty years of Great Lakes weather, and the cedar shavings he kept in a coffee can to absorb humidity.
He pointed at the bike.
He said, “Climb up, kid. On the back.”
I had been on the back of the Heritage maybe ten times in my life. Always with the engine on. Always with him driving. Always around the block at slow speeds with my arms around his waist.
I had never been on the bike with the engine off.
I climbed up onto the rear seat.
He climbed onto the front.
He did not start the engine.
He did not put on his helmet.
He did not put on his cut.
He just sat there.
He looked back at me over his shoulder.
He said, “Caleb. We’re gonna sit here for a while. I’m not gonna talk much. I want you to do one thing. You ready?”
I said, “Yes, Poppy.”
He said, “I want you to listen.”
I said, “Listen to what?”
He said, “That’s the lesson, buddy. We’re gonna find out.”
He turned forward.
He did not say another word for almost an hour.
I will tell you what happened in the next three hours, because I remember it more clearly than any single afternoon of my life.
For the first ten minutes, I fidgeted.
I did not know what I was supposed to be doing. I looked at the back of his shaved head. I looked at the gray beard hanging down on either side of his face. I looked at the small “ANGELA” tattoo on the inside of his left wrist as his hand rested on the handlebar.
I was bored.
I said, “Poppy?”
He said, “Shh, buddy. Listen.”
I said, “I don’t hear anything.”
He said, “That’s because you ain’t tried yet. Try.”
I tried.
For about three minutes I did not hear anything.
Then I heard a bird outside the garage. A small one. I did not know what kind.
I said, “Poppy. A bird.”
He said, “Yeah, kid. A bird. What else.”
I listened.
I heard a car go by on the road.
I heard the wind move through the leaves of the tree in his backyard.
I heard the refrigerator in the kitchen kick on through the wall.
I heard my own breathing.
I heard, after maybe twenty more minutes, my own heartbeat in my ears.
I said, “Poppy. I can hear my heart.”
He said, “Yeah, kid. That one’s important.”
We sat there for the rest of the afternoon.
He spoke to me, total, maybe six times in three hours.
Each time he spoke, it was just to ask, “What do you hear now, buddy?”
And I told him.
A wasp hitting the garage window.
The neighbor’s lawnmower starting up two houses down.
A kid yelling somewhere down the block.
A train far away on the line that runs along Lake Erie.
The wind picking up, then dying down.
A dog barking in a different yard.
The hum of the fluorescent garage light.
The small creak of the leather seat under my own butt when I shifted.
The drip of water from the faucet at the workbench.
The rustle of a bird in the gutter.
My own breathing.
My own heartbeat.
For three hours, I sat on the back of an unrunning motorcycle in my grandfather’s garage, and I listened to the world.
At 3:48 p.m., he turned around again.
He looked at me.
He said, “Buddy. You ready to come back?”
I said, “Yes, Poppy.”
He said, “Tell me. What did you hear today?”
I told him.
The list was long. I have written it down here exactly the way I told him then. Down to the order. Down to the number of birds.
When I was done, he said, “Caleb. You hear all that any other day?”
I said, “No, Poppy.”
He said, “Why not, you think?”
I thought about it.
I said, “Because I wasn’t listening.”
He said, “That’s the lesson, buddy. The whole lesson. The world is always talking to you. Wind. Birds. Engines. Your own heart. Other people. Everything is making sound, all the time. Most folks never hear any of it. They walk around with their own thoughts so loud, they miss the whole thing.”
He paused.
He said, “If you can learn to hear it — really hear it, the way you did today — you ain’t never gonna be alone, kid. Not one day of your life. Not when I’m gone. Not when your mama’s gone. Not when your friends have moved away. Not when your wife has died. Not when you’re old and your knees don’t work and you can’t ride anymore. Not when you’re the last one in the room. You ain’t never gonna be alone, because the world is always talking. You just gotta listen.”
He paused again.
He said, “That’s it. That’s the lesson. That’s all I got. Sit still and listen.”
He got off the bike.
He helped me down.
He said, “Now come on inside. I made cookies.”
We went inside.
We ate cookies.
My mother picked me up at five.
She asked me what Poppy had taught me.
I told her.
I said, “Mom. He told me to sit still and listen.”
She looked at me. She was not sure what to do with that. She had been expecting something more dramatic.
She said, “Listen to what, sweetheart?”
I said, “To everything, Mom. The wind. The birds. My own breathing. He said if I do that, I will never be lonely. He said the world is always talking.”
She did not say anything for a long moment.
Then she said, “Caleb. That sounds like a very important lesson.”
I said, “Yeah, Mom. It is.”
My grandfather died on August 17th, 2018.
It was nine and a half weeks after the day in the garage.
He died in his own bed. My grandmother’s photograph was on the dresser across from him. My father was holding one of his hands. My mother was holding the other. I was not allowed in the room because I was seven and they were not sure how I would do.
I did not see him die. I sat in the kitchen with my aunt and ate a peanut butter sandwich that I do not remember eating.
The funeral was on August 21st, 2018.
I did not cry at the funeral.
I want to tell you why.
People kept coming up to me at the wake. Adults. They knelt down. They put their hands on my shoulders. They said things like, “Caleb, sweetheart, it’s okay to cry. You can cry. He would want you to.”
I did not feel like crying.
I felt like Poppy was somewhere I could still hear him if I listened correctly.
I did not have the words for that at seven. I did not say it out loud to any of the adults at the wake.
What I did do — at about 2:30 in the afternoon, an hour after we got back from the cemetery — was leave the kitchen full of casseroles and aunts and uncles and walk out through the back door, across the patio, and into Poppy’s garage.
I climbed up onto the back seat of the Heritage.
I closed my eyes.
I sat there.
After about ten minutes, my mother came looking for me. She was worried. She had been crying all morning.
She opened the garage door.
She saw me on the back of the bike with my eyes closed.
She said, “Caleb. Honey. What are you doing in here?”
I did not open my eyes.
I said, “Mom. I’m listening to Poppy.”
She did not say anything.
She walked over.
She sat down on the small wooden stool next to the bike.
She did not interrupt me.
She sat there with me for the next hour.
After about an hour, I opened my eyes.
She said, “What did you hear, baby?”
I said, “I heard the wind in the tree. I heard a bird. I heard the refrigerator in the kitchen. I heard my own breathing. I heard my own heart.”
I paused.
I said, “Mom. Poppy was right. He’s not gone. He’s just in the wind now.”
My mother started to cry.
She came and sat next to me on the bike.
She put her arm around me.
She said, “Caleb. Your grandfather was right.”
She said, “I’m so glad he taught you that, baby.”
I leaned my head against her shoulder.
She rocked me back and forth gently on the back of the unrunning Heritage.
We did not say anything else.
I want to be honest about something.
I did not understand the full lesson at seven.
I understood the surface of it. Sit still. Listen. The world is always talking.
I did not understand what Poppy was actually doing.
What he was doing — I am pretty sure now, twelve years later — was teaching me how to grieve him before he was gone.
He was teaching me a practice. He was teaching me a place to go when I needed him after he was gone. He was teaching me that I could find him anywhere I was willing to be still.
He could not give me himself. He was about to die.
He gave me the next best thing. He gave me a way to hear him in the world.
I did not understand it as a child. I just did it. I just sat on the back of the Heritage in his garage, every time I went over there, and I listened.
His house — and the Heritage — went to my father after he died. My father, who is the quiet brother of the family, kept everything exactly the way Poppy had left it. The Heritage stayed in the garage. The cedar shavings stayed in the coffee can. The Mary Oliver paperback stayed on the nightstand. The leather journal stayed in the drawer. The sketchpad stayed on the workbench.
For four years, our family rented out Poppy’s house to a young couple who needed a place to start out. They were renters who knew about the bike and the garage and respected them. They lived in the front and middle of the house. The garage stayed locked. The Heritage stayed inside.
In 2022, the renters moved out.
My father moved my grandmother’s old vanity out of the bedroom and Poppy’s leather journal into a small fireproof box, and we made the house mine to use whenever I wanted.
I have been driving the two and a half hours from Penn State Behrend back to Poppy’s house every couple of months for the last year and a half.
I do not bring friends.
I do not bring my girlfriend.
I just go. I open the garage. I climb on the back of the Heritage. I close my eyes.
I listen.
For an hour, sometimes two.
The wind. The birds. The refrigerator. My own breathing. My own heart.
Sometimes I cry.
I have cried for him, on the back of that bike, more times in the last twelve years than I have cried about anything else.
But I do not feel alone when I cry there.
I never have.
There is a tradition I have started, on my own, that nobody in the family knows about yet.
Every August 17th — the anniversary of Poppy’s death — I drive from wherever I am to Erie, Pennsylvania.
I get to the house by mid-morning.
I open the garage.
I sit on the back of the Heritage from 9 a.m. to noon.
Three hours.
The same length of time we sat together in 2018.
I do not start the engine.
I do not put on a helmet.
I do not move much.
I just listen.
I have done this every August 17th for the last six years, since I was thirteen. I started it on my own. Nobody told me to. I do not even know if Poppy would have wanted me to. But I think he would have.
This year, on August 17th, 2024 — my sixth anniversary sitting — I noticed something I had not noticed before.
There is a small piece of paper folded inside the cardboard backing of the small framed photograph of my grandmother that sits on Poppy’s workbench.
I had been looking at that photograph for twelve years and I had never noticed.
This year, the corner of the paper was sticking out.
The frame had warped slightly in the humidity over the years, and the paper had shifted.
I took the frame down. I opened the back.
Inside the cardboard backing was a folded piece of yellow legal-pad paper.
It was in Poppy’s handwriting.
It was not addressed.
It was not dated.
It was three sentences.
It read:
Whoever finds this — if you can hear the wind, you can hear me. I never went anywhere. I just changed how I talk. — V.R.
I sat down on the concrete floor of the garage.
I read it nine times.
I cried for forty-five minutes.
Then I folded it back up. I put it back in the cardboard backing. I rehung the photograph on the workbench.
I have not told my father. I have not told my mother. I have not told a single brother in the Lake Erie Riders MC.
I will tell my father someday.
For now, the note is mine.
I am nineteen now.
I am studying environmental science at Penn State Behrend. I want to work in wetlands restoration. I want to spend my career outside in the kind of places where you can hear birds and wind and your own heartbeat without anyone interrupting you.
I have not learned to ride a Harley yet. I plan to. The Heritage is mine when I am ready for it. My father is keeping it for me.
I sit on the back of it every couple of months.
I sit on it for three hours every August 17th.
I will sit on it on August 17th of this year.
I will sit on it on August 17th of next year.
I will sit on it for as many August 17ths as I am alive to sit on it.
Because my grandfather Vincent Rinaldi — Cap, Poppy, the loudest man at the dinner table and the quietest man in his own garage — gave me, at seven years old, the only lesson he had time to give me.
He gave me a place to find him.
He gave me a practice.
He gave me three hours of silence on the back of an unrunning motorcycle that I have been carrying for twelve years and will carry until I die.
Sit still.
Listen.
The world is always talking to you.
Including the people who are gone.
If this story moved you — follow the page. There are more grandfathers out there like Poppy. More garages. More unrunning motorcycles. More children sitting in silence with their eyes closed because somebody who loved them taught them how. There are more stories the world doesn’t see — and I will keep telling them as long as someone keeps reading.
