The Bottom Shelf Review

Losing someone you love is like losing your favorite… well, anything. When it is lost you get so confused and frustrated trying to figure out where it had gone. It slowly hurts more and more when you can’t find it and have been looking everywhere. Then, it settles in that it is gone forever and you’re never going to get it back no matter how hard you wish it. That is what it felt like and still feels like without my Papa PJ. He was the definition of a cowboy to me, and he was my hero. He shaped me in a way that I know he would be proud to see. He changed my life. I know you’re not supposed to have favorites when it comes to family and grandparents, but my Papa PJ was my absolute favorite. When I say he was the best, he was the absolute best. He always supported me in anything and everything. I miss him so much, but I know he’s watching over me, causing all the trouble he can up there.

Every summer since we moved to Ohio, I remember going to stay with him and Grandma Sandi for a week or two. Those days were jam packed with so many fun things that I will forever remember the happy memories. He owned a huge farm, it had 3 large hay buildings, a pond with a dock and fishing hut, and a storage container enclosure. However, this wasn’t any typical farm, yeah, he had cows and a few horses, but we also had bison, elk, and my favorite; Dakota or ‘Kota’ as we called him, the black bear. In the massive pond that he had we would go fishing almost every day, even if my two sisters decided they weren’t going to come with us. I think that may be why I always want to go fishing anytime the weather is nice. It’s something I do alone now, but I feel like he is there fishing right beside me, smiling and laughing when I manage to get one off the hook all by myself. Out of me and my sisters, I think I went with him to do the chores around the farm in the ranger the most. I remember being so scared to walk into Kota’s enclosure to feed him, but knowing Papa PJ was right there with me, knowing he would keep me safe made it worth it. When you think of bears you know they are big, but they are also a protector. You also may think of a teddy bear and how you want to cuddle up with them. Papa PJ was all of these things and more. Now Kota didn’t have any regular diet a bear should have. Breakfast: large dog food, raw eggs, leftover pancakes, waffles, French toast, bacon and sausage. Lunch: similar to the dog food and some nutrient powders with the promise of pizza, burgers, anything found in the fridge. Dinner was honestly just anything leftover with who really knows what else. Oh, can’t forget Kota’s absolute, most favored treat of all; Twizzlers. Papa PJ would keep a large pack of these in his jacket or pocket at all times. You could never visit him without giving him a few Twizzlers, it was practically an unspoken rule. I remember him telling me the story of how he ended up with a black bear cub. A man that owned a hunting preserve had a bear sow brought in to be hunted, but she gave birth to Kota before she was released to be hunted. So, the guy gave Kota to Papa PJ since he knew he already had a red-tailed hawk and liked wild animals. That cub became the best friend he ever had.

Other than the farm, they had the house, the cabin, and the lodge. I only remember some specific spots in the house. It had a large living room with skylights and a big leather couch. From behind the living room there were steps and kind of like a ramp down to the basement. The basement was filled with toys and a TV with a WII hooked up to it that we would all take turns on. They eventually sold the house and moved into the cabin since it was closer to the farm. It still left enough time to make lifelong memories. My sisters and I would sleep on air mattresses in the office and every time without fail we would argue about who got to have the soft Dora the Explorer blanket. In that house was the first time he showed me and my sister Abigail the movie “Bear with Me”. Anytime we bring it up to our dad he likes to scoff and tell us how terrible it was, but we always hit him with how he can thank Papa PJ for making us love it. Any time we watched any movie, Papa PJ would make sure my popcorn had gummy worms in it. It was our thing that we did. Once they sold the house, we started staying with them at the cabin or the lodge that was right down the road. The cabin was small and would be at the end of a short gravel driveway, with a wooden post that says “P-J Ranch”. The cabin was one story with 3-4 rooms. Obviously, staying with grandparents meant eating the most unhealthiest things for breakfast or any meal. For breakfast we would have donuts, practically every morning. Papa PJ once bought me one called a bear paw, the size of a bear paw and also the size of my face. I remember he walked outside to get something only for a few moments and when he came back, I had eaten the whole thing. I remember he asked me where it went and I told him “In my stomach”, he laughed and gave me a high five.

Papa PJ is the reason I love a lot of things in my life. Fishing and gummy worms are only two. I think he is the reason Tom Cruise as I like to say is “the love of my life”. He had taped his movie “Knight and Day” to the TV. It was like any action-packed Tom Cruise movie. I remember watching it almost every day there. In the beginning, he would recite different scenes to me, by the fourth or fifth time watching we would do them together and laugh. It is where my love for drumstick ice cream came to play. In the opening scene, Tom Cruise’s character is eating one. We would keep track of how many we had eaten to see who could eat more. It all really resulted in a lot of stomach pain. Thinking about it now, Papa PJ was exactly like Tom Cruise in his movies. If you didn’t know him and heard all the crazy things he did or the trouble he got into, you’d think he was a mad man. But that was just who he was. It also didn’t help that if I showed you a picture of him when he was in the army and a young Tom Cruise side by side, you’d think they were the same person.

The lodge had rooms based off different animals. The bear room; which is the one I always claimed was my personal favorite. There was a room for elk, turkey, coyote, deer, and buffalo. All with their own pictures, quilt, or taxidermy. As mentioned before, Papa PJ was big on wild animals. Some of them he hunted, others had a safe place on the farm. He had this one buffalo named Baby Doll, she thought she was a run of the mill cow. She stayed with the herd of cattle and even started to try and moo like a cow. The lodge is where they would host Christmas. I remember going out in the freezing cold with my sisters and cousins and we would play outside in the woods behind the house until it was time to open presents. The last time I was there, Grandma Sandi gave me the blanket him and I would fight over. I sleep with it every night.

I remember the day he died. I was sleeping. Mom and dad came to wake all of us up to tell us the news. I remember just standing in my dad’s hug being too in shock to cry. How could he be dead? It felt too surreal to process. Being sent back to bed, I think the shock wore off after a few minutes staring up at the ceiling while memory after memory went through my head, I cried for hours. I woke up all red and puffy eyed. We all struggled hard with his passing. He died of a stroke. None of us really saw it coming, like most. I think the doctors had said something about making rash and weird decisions was like a precursor to one, but with Papa PJ crazy ideas and decisions was a norm for him. The funeral was nice, my best friend from home came and was able to make me laugh during the service. I remember hearing the song “In the Arms of an Angel” play, I never sobbed so hard in my life. He died January 8^th, so the burial was cold, the cold didn’t bother me at the time, I was already feeling numb. The reception where all the family gathered to eat and tell stories was nice. Papa PJ was a crazy man; the stories made my stomach hurt from laughter and reminded me of the good hurt in my stomach from eating so much junk food with him. To anyone else, the stories would make them think he was insane and downright awful, to all of us that was just plain ole PJ. Everyone kept asking how Grandma Sandi was going to care for Kota since that was always what PJ did. She said, “If I could handle your grandpa all these years, I think I can handle the bear.” She did in fact handle the bear, but he knew his best friend wasn’t here anymore no matter how much Grandma Sandi wore his clothes with his scent. She eventually had to put Kota down because of his depression. We now eat Twizzlers in his and Papa PJ’s honor on January 8^th, to remember them both and all the great memories shared.

I didn’t change too much about it. I added some more detail to describing the houses and the farm. I also added the antagonist which was the stroke and that is what killed them. I felt like I didn’t need a conclusion necessarily because the last sentence basically concludes the story and is the wrap of it. I wanted to add a part where I had a friend gift me a necklace with a bear paw and Papa Pj’s birthstone on it and how I wear it almost every day because it is even close to my heart. As well as, how my grandma gave me a necklace at my graduation party; a necklace with a singular pearl on it for PJ (Pearl Johnson) and I sobbed when I broke the chain on it. But I didn’t really have a place for it in the flow of events and details, so I left it out. Your comments on being descriptive of the lodge and connections between certain things I wrote helped a lot. As well as the comments on symbolism and how to close it essentially. I described how Papa PJ had aspects of a bear himself like the protectiveness the protectiveness and being big. Papa PJ wasn’t a huge man, but he was tall and had a big “beer gut” so I felt like they related well with each other. There wasn’t any symbolism I could manage with the taxidermy in the lodge. Overall, this story was hard to write, probably the hardest I have ever written. Papa PJ and I had a great relationship and while I do get happy reliving our memories, actually writing them down and going into detail about them was hard. Some days I couldn’t even write 2 sentences without immediately tearing up. However, I am very happy to have had him in my life and am able to share it.