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Today is national, "Making Life Beautiful Day." I guarantee most of you didn't know that.
You see, there's always a special day if you look online at the National Day calendar. Of course, this week also consists of National Axe-Throwing day -- but we will not be discussing that in this column. Sorry to those of you who enjoy weaponry.
Yes, June 11 is set aside to celebrate those who make life beautiful. Perhaps you are one of those people. It is a day dedicated to the ones who perform simple acts of kindness for no reason other than they genuinely care for us.
It is a day devoted to those who provide a sympathetic word on those days when life appears too difficult to endure.
It is a moment on the calendar that tells us to stop and reflect on those who make and those who have made our world much more tolerable and more manageable. More meaningful, more beautiful.
And the thing about it is they don't do it for the recognition. They aren't doing it for the accolades or any favor. Sometimes they just simply try to make life a more beautiful place in which to live.
My grandparents were those people. Ask anyone who knew them. Mention the names Cal and Shirley Carnahan to someone in Toronto and you will most certainly be blessed with heartfelt memories of times they made life more beautiful for others.
They were my inspirations. They are my life's greatest influences. Here is why…
A 12-year-old boy was pulling his vegetable wagon containing horseradish down the street, trying to sell the items to add to his family's income. While doing so, he stopped and held the ladder for 10-year-old girl he didn't even know. She was outside washing windows.
That same boy would years later become my Pappap. And the little girl, my grandma.
When I reflect on this, I think to myself, had each of them not been doing chores to help out their families that day, perhaps they never would have met.
But God knows what He's doing. Here is why…
As the boy entered high school, he continued to remain in the background of her life.
I don't think she had any idea that he was even interested in her at all. She went to dances with friends or with boys who weren't him. And because of this, he went to dances with girls who weren't her.
So what did my grandfather do? He took a girl to the dance, walked her home and returned to the dance on his bicycle. Why? So he could wait for the girl from the ladder. Every time she left a dance, my grandfather was there. Waiting outside and making himself look busy. Never approaching her, but rather, following from a short distance to ensure she made it home safely.
If that isn't love, then love doesn't exist.
When my mother was growing up on Biltmore Avenue during the '50s and '60s, my Pappap would always take the time to go outside and play whiffle ball and "Father May I?" with every child in that neighborhood. He could entertain even the most difficult child with a paper bag and pair of socks. He devoted his spare time to any child who needed his attention and made them feel as if they were the most important person in the world. Even when he was in his late '70s, the neighborhood children would come knocking on his front door and would ask my grandma if her "dad" could come out and play with them. He was that wonderful.
He took out a second mortgage on his house so my mom could buy her own and cashed in a life insurance policy so she could go on vacation with her friend's family who had just lost a child. He bought a 1965 gold Plymouth Barracuda that wasn't quite to his liking simply because his children thought it was "cool."
No one was ever more empathetic and loving toward others. Except perhaps for that little girl on the ladder. My grandma encompassed a spirit that can never be justified with words.
How many people would ensure there was always time to stop and play the piano for and bake cookies with the little girl who lived across the street whose mother was severely ill? (And that right there is a, "making life beautiful" moment, for sure.)
Who else could find the strength to drive for miles after receiving chemotherapy just to buy a cake from Gus's Goodies for her granddaughter, because it was her favorite?
My grandparents touched many lives throughout their years together. It came naturally to them. And the influence they had on me will never be surpassed by anyone. They helped teach me about God by taking me to church every Sunday. They made me feel as if I were the smartest child in the world by asking hundreds of trivia questions around the dinner table. I could answer each one correctly. I realize now they were questions only a 6-year-old would know. How great is that?
Who else would stand in line at 5 a.m. To buy you Bon Jovi tickets, purchase groceries for your long-haired friends in a band, and do anything and everything you asked of them? I haven't found anyone yet who would -- except for my mother. And she learned through their example.
After my grandma died in 2002, my Pappap drove from Toronto to the Wintersville cemetery every day. Every single day. For five years until he, too, passed away. He would visit with her and recite to her her favorite Psalm, Psalm 121. As the years passed by, he sometimes forgot the words. Yet, nothing deterred him from continuing on until those words were found.
He taught my three boys that Psalm so that when he died, there would be someone there to continue to recite it for her. I know that she is grateful for that undying love. And I am grateful that they were mine for a little while.
In knowing them, I have had the opportunity to encounter what few of us ever get the chance to see --two people who genuinely loved each other for a lifetime. They are what and who I think of on this day known as, "Making Life Beautiful Day." They made everyone's life beautiful. For 66 years they completed each other. They were one. And the world was blessed.