I was ten years old when my grandfather died. He died in his sleep during the cold February night with his rosary in his hands. My cousin had to break into the house on Sunday morning because Grampy never missed Mass and it was time to go.He found him under the covers, cold and still.  The doctor told my father that he had died peacefully, that he fell into a deep sleep and his heart slowed and then, eventually, it simply stopped. My father always said that he hoped that was how he would go - to fall asleep in one world and wake up in the next.  His was the second earliest death I can recall. Grammie had predeceased him by five years and it was during those intervening five years that I got to know the old man. Grampy spoke French, used Pearson’s Red Top Snuff, spoke little and worked hard. He lived alone in the same little house he had  built in the 1920s, heated only by a woodstove. To say he didn’t work would be a lie; he was retired, but spent his time working hard, keeping himself busy living a life that would have been familiar to anyone born the century before, every day filled with vigor and purpose. He drew his water from a spring, used a scythe to reap the hay from his field, and cooked his own meals, with a liberal use of salt pork and beans. He was a simple man who had supported his family by working for all of the farmers his property bordered and maintaining a huge garden, a large barn and small horse barn, a pig sty and chicken coop. His house always smelled of wood and wintergreen, molasses and roses. He had a Farmer’s Almanac tied to a string hanging on a nail on the wall next to the telephone he never used. He drank his water from a tin dipper kept in a pail covered with muslin, still the freshest, clearest water I have ever had.  After my grandmother passed, I asked my mother if I could go visit my Grampie, alone,all by myself.  We lived on the Back Presque Isle Road in Caribou, Maine in a part of the world that still felt new and untamed. It was 1971. At seven years old, my mother gave me permission to visit him, possibly because of her concern for the solitary state in which he dwelt. I had heard conversations on the phone between my father and his sisters worrying about the fact that the old man was talking to thin air, addressing his wife even though she had gone and met her maker. My father wisely told his sisters not to concern themselves with his need to speak to the close and quiet darkness, because, to be truthful, I spent entire days with the old man during which he might have uttered only a dozen words to anyone, living or dead. “He’s not hurting anyone,” my dad had said, “and otherwise, he is fine. Leave him alone.” They did.   I would tell my mother where I was going and she would tell me to make sure I came home when I saw the porch light flashing, something she always did to summon my brother and I back to our evening meal - which was supper, never dinner. That was the thing. I could see my grandfather’s house from the kitchen of our home. I had to look over Grampy’s field and past his gray-boarded, tar-papered horse barn, a low-built double stall affair that hadn’t seen a horse in my lifetime. If I looked in the falling dark, I could see her switching the light on and off. I even knew when the light was right so I would look out for it.  On the days I visited my grandfather,  I would walk along the side of the road until I got there and I would just walk up to him and he would look over at me and nod, his youngest grandchild, without even a word. We would spend long hours like that, just being together without much conversation at all. He would answer me if I had questions, usually about fishing or axes or cows, because he still had one that often got loose and wandered through our garden. Later in the day he would offer me molasses cookies he had bought at the store.  We would watch Gunsmoke together on Monday nights and then I w