Last year, my grandfather suddenly passed away.
He was living in Michigan, a solid 1,000 miles away from my home along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico.
I hated it when my car broke down on me and I had no money left on any of my credit cards for a plane ticket to see my grandfather during his final moments. Instead, I had to read the news from a relative’s Facebook post during a lunch break at my job. For the next few months, I wasn’t completely right in the head. My mind felt scattered and torn. Finally, about four months later, my father called me one afternoon asking me if I could help him arrange HVAC repair at my grandfather’s old house. My father was getting ready to move in and wanted to put an air conditioner inside the old house. Unfortunately, my grandfather had said for years how every local HVAC supplier told him individually that his house was far too small for a fan-forced heating and cooling system. But, the very first company that drove out to the property to give us an estimate had four different options available for us to choose from. I had two other companies give us estimates, and they too had multiple options for fan-forced heating and cooling systems. We soon realized that it was my grandfather’s way of dismissing the question of why he never had air conditioning in his house. He also came from an era where this technology had not been fully adopted by the general public yet. He might have seen air conditioning as an optional luxury, rather than a necessity like many of us today.