Harry Schierling, 1916-2010.

(L) Harry Schierling, 1940. (R) Harry Schierling's Argus Model M camera (circa 1939-1940) with original box and paperwork, given to me by my father.

I remember my grandfather most as a farmer. His 160 acres in Wellington, Kansas was a modest endeavor, with a double-wide trailer and wheat fields as far as the eye could see. My childhood recollections are of exploring the requisite barn and grain silo, pulling my younger sister in a Radio Flyer wagon attached to the riding lawnmower, and that there was always bread and butter on the table with supper.

We would take sandwiches out to the fields when it was harvest season, for my grandfather and father to eat while driving the combine and grain truck. I can remember the smell of sweat and hot wheat dust when they were done for the day, the stubble of my father's unshaved face.

I am so very lucky to have memories of my grandparents, as most of my same-aged friends, peers and colleagues never really knew their parents' parents. And as I have grown older, I have realized that funerals for these grandparents is not as sad for me as a loss, but sad for me as a loss of knowledge of simpler times. They cannot tell me those stories any more, when things were grown and not just appropriated.

We do not endure the same way, we do not appreciate the same things, now. I miss the physical, but these are the emotional losses that I mourn.

These are the absences that I will miss most.