Last Words

I was seven that cold morning in the Idaho Mountains of my youth. Standing there with me, surrounding the small smoky fire was my Grandfather and his two brothers. All branches of the family had gathered there to celebrate my grandparent’s fiftieth anniversary. I stood shivering by the fire, staring at the men that I admired and glorified that towered around me, all holding a beer, and listening to their conversation about the family line. It was at that point they all looked down at me and I heard my grandfather say, “That’s it, he’s it”. Recognizing my puzzled look, my grandfather knelt down, put his large hand on my shoulder, looked at me with those blue eyes that held years of memory and said, “You are the last to carry on the Robbins name, take damn good care of it.” Those words are the last that I can remember him saying to me, and to this day they run as deep as bone.