For the Ones Who Carried It Home

Today is not a day for celebration.

It's a day for gratitude. For remembrance. For honoring the men and women who gave everything — and the ones who carried the weight of service with them long after they came home.

I want to use this space today to talk about my grandfather. Because he deserves to be remembered out loud. And because on a day like today, keeping it to myself doesn't feel like enough.

John Beasley

My grandfather's name was John Beasley. He served in the Army and earned a Purple Heart after a bomb exploded in his bunker. He carried shrapnel in his leg for the rest of his life — a physical reminder of what he survived and what he gave. The surgeons couldn't get it all out. So it stayed. Part of him. Part of his story.

He didn't make a big deal of it. Men like him rarely did. They came home, they got on with living, and they let the weight of what they'd been through settle quietly into the background of who they were. You had to know to look for it. And even then, he wasn't someone who invited that conversation.

What he invited was laughter. And warmth. And the particular comfort of being in the presence of someone who loved you without making a production of it.

The man I knew

My grandfather was funny. Genuinely, unexpectedly funny — the kind of funny that catches you off guard and makes you laugh before you realize what happened (and now I realize where my daddy got it from). He was goofy in the best way. Silly in a way that felt completely at odds with the stern exterior he sometimes wore, until you knew him well enough to understand that the silliness was the real him and the sternness was just the door you had to knock on first.

You had to know how to read him when you walked into a room. There was a way to approach him, a rhythm to it, and once you learned it you were rewarded with one of the warmest, most loving people you'd ever met.

The family called him Dolphin. I love that. It suited him in ways I can't fully explain — something gentle and a little unexpected about a man who had seen what he'd seen and still showed up soft enough to earn a nickname like that.

He loved CNN. Watched it constantly. Had very strong opinions about the news and about history and about the people who made it. Including — and this is something I always found equal parts hilarious and completely non-negotiable — a particular distaste for General Patton that was deep-seated and unwavering and not up for debate. 😂

He loved his pipe too. I can still smell it if I think hard enough — that particular warm tobacco smell that meant you were close to him, that meant you were home. It's funny how a scent can hold an entire person inside it. Whenever I catch that smell somewhere unexpected it stops me completely. Just for a second. Just long enough to be back in West Palm Beach with him again.

And the TV. Oh, the TV. If my grandfather had the television on — and he almost always had the television on — you could hear it from anywhere in the house. Probably from a few houses down if we're being honest. 😂 CNN at full volume was just part of the atmosphere of being around him. It was background music. It was home.

I never fully got to the bottom of the General Patton thing. But I respected it completely.

West Palm Beach

Some of my most treasured childhood memories exist in West Palm Beach. Visiting my grandparents there felt like stepping into a different rhythm entirely — warmer, slower, full of the particular magic that comes from being somewhere that feels like home even when it isn't technically yours.

I can still feel what those trips felt like. The warmth of being there. The comfort of being around him & my grandma. The way time moved differently when we were together. Those memories are golden in the way that only the best childhood memories are — the kind that don't fade, that don't get blurry at the edges, that stay vivid and warm no matter how many years pass.

He was a big part of why those trips felt the way they did. He gave that to me. And I have never taken it for granted.

The pipe smell. The TV turned all the way up. CNN filling every room. Him in his chair, completely at ease, completely himself. Arguing with my grandma half the time about things that didn’t matter. That's what I see when I close my eyes and go back there.

That's what I will always see.

What today feels like

He is gone now. And so is my dad. And so is my grandma.

On days like today the weight of missing them all at the same time is something I don't always have words for. My dad was the one who gave me my love of Disney — and John Beasley was the one who gave my dad so much of who he was. There's a line that runs through all of it. Through the people we come from and the people they shaped us into and the love that keeps moving forward even after they're gone.

I think about that line a lot. Especially today.

My grandfather was not famous. He didn't make history books. He was a man who served his country quietly and came home and built a life and loved his family and made his granddaughter feel like one of the luckiest kids in the world just by being exactly who he was.

That is enough. That is more than enough.

To every family honoring someone today

Whether your person fell in service or carried their service home with them for the rest of their life — today belongs to them.

To the families who feel this day as a loss rather than a holiday — I see you. Your grief is valid and your person mattered and they are not forgotten.

And to my grandfather — John Beasley, Army veteran, Purple Heart recipient, CNN enthusiast, famously anti-Patton, pipe in hand, TV loud enough for the whole neighborhood, the funniest man in any room he walked into, the one his family called Dolphin —

Thank you. For what you gave. For who you were. For the love you left behind that I still feel every single day.

I miss you. 🤍

xoxo,
Katie