My Pap was a lot of things. Stubborn. Proud. Army veteran. The kind of man who said what he meant and meant every word of it. I was lucky enough to be there when he took his last breath, and I would give anything to hear his voice one more time.
He and my dad got into it one day over politics. It got heated the way it always does in our family. Then Pap went quiet for a second, looked my dad dead in the eye, and asked, calm as a Sunday morning, who he voted for.
My dad admitted he hadn’t voted.
Pap didn’t yell. Didn’t lecture. He said, “You chose not to have a voice for your country. You have no say in this conversation.” And that was the end of it. My dad never forgot that. Neither did I.