One year ago today, my grandfather Jimmy Carter passed away.
We knew it was coming. Papa was 100 years old. He had been in hospice care for 22 months, and at the end, he knew it was his time. He accepted that. He even welcomed it.
None of that made us ready.
I have lost my brother, my mom, and now both of my grandparents, and every time someone you love dies, it creates this bright demarcation line in your life. There is a before, and there is an after. It does not matter how long they lived, how full their life was, or how much time you had to prepare. The finality of it is still profound.
When Papa died, our family had only a few minutes to ourselves before the news spread around the world. About ten minutes after I got the call, the first condolence text arrived from a friend. Then another. Then the trickle became a flood, and the flood became a tsunami.
Suddenly, my grandfather was everywhere.
I grew up after the presidency. I missed the campaign, Camp David, the Panama Canal treaties, and normalizing relations with China. During my lifetime, Papa regularly made international news, but usually for a moment. His death was something entirely different.
The next morning, exhausted and numb, I was lying on my couch in pajama pants scrolling through messages when I came across a statement from King Charles mourning my grandfather. I remember staring at the signature, “Charles R.,” and getting distracted thinking about the R—for Rex, for King—and how strange it looked after a lifetime of seeing Queen Elizabeth sign “Elizabeth R.”
And then it hit me.
The King of England had essentially just written my family a sympathy card and posted it on Facebook.
The entire world was remembering my grandfather.
What struck me most was what people remembered him for. They remembered peace. Human rights. Democracy. Global health. His commitment to easing human suffering. His humility. His character.
I have spent the past year thinking about those things.
I have traveled around the country talking about my grandparents’ work on caregiving, peace, conservation, submarines, public service, mental health, and democracy. I traveled to Liberia to help transition a mental health program my grandparents helped build over to the Liberian government. I spoke at the dedication of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. I celebrated a new Jimmy Carter postage stamp on what would have been his 101st birthday.
For a year, I have looked at my grandfather from almost every angle imaginable.
But when I think about the man I called Papa, that isn’t really where my mind goes.
I think about Christmas morning in Plains.
I remember worrying as a kid that the Secret Service might not let Santa onto the property. My dad assured me that Santa knew to stop at the command post first.
I remember all the grandchildren waiting behind the doors to the living room at six in the morning before being released to find our piles of unwrapped presents. I remember the Christmas morning when I walked in and immediately knew that the sunburst Fender Stratocaster sitting in my grandmother’s chair was mine. I still have it.
I remember homemade biscuits, local sausage, Papa putting cane syrup on his pancakes, and all of us learning the hard way that when my grandmother offered you milk, there was a nonzero chance you were about to receive a giant glass of buttermilk.
And I remember Christmas turkey.
Papa hunted one for Thanksgiving and another for Christmas every year he could. I tell the story of the one time he took a very impatient 12-year-old me turkey hunting and tried to teach me how to sit still, listen to the woods, and call a bird. I also tell one of my family’s favorite stories about the morning he accidentally shot three turkeys with one shell and spent the rest of the day performing an elaborate display of remorse over violating his hunting limit.
Those were my grandparents.
But the strange thing about growing up with Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is that family stories and world history have a habit of occupying exactly the same space.
One Christmas Eve, my dad knocked on Papa’s closed office door because dinner was getting cold.
Papa looked up and said, “Hello, Jeffrey. Merry Christmas. I’m on the phone with Hillary Clinton talking about North Korea. I’ll be out in a minute.”
That was also my grandfather.
In this episode, I look at the work that consumed most of his life after the presidency: the work of The Carter Center to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope.
I tell the story of Papa flying into a civil war in Liberia after his secretary Nancy called Charles Taylor on a satellite phone and told him to stop shooting for fifteen damn minutes so President Carter’s plane could land.
I talk about why Papa believed so deeply in elections and democracy—not as abstract political ideas, but as tools ordinary people can use to protect themselves from oppression and hold their leaders accountable.
I tell the story of his war against neglected tropical diseases, and of a furious Jimmy Carter finding children infected with Guinea worm in Ghana after a program there had slipped backward. Rather than lecture Ghana’s leaders, Papa found another pressure point: national pride. He threatened to rename Guinea worm “Ghana worm.”
They eliminated it.
And I tell one of my favorite stories about Papa flying to North Korea in 2010 to bring home an imprisoned American named Aijalon Gomes.
Papa wasn’t representing the United States government. He wasn’t an ambassador. There was no diplomatic summit waiting for him. When he returned to Boston, he didn’t hold a press conference or stand in front of cameras to take credit.
There was simply an American sitting in a North Korean prison, and Jimmy Carter was one of the few people on Earth who might be able to bring him home.
So he did.
That story, to me, gets very close to the center of who my grandfather was.
His entire life was one of service: to his country as a naval officer, to Georgia as a state senator and governor, to the United States as President, and then to humanity as a peacemaker, disease fighter, election monitor, home builder, and advocate for human rights.
The world remembers those things.
I do too.
But he was also the man who taught me how to read a trout stream, tie a fly, cut a dovetail, call a turkey, put shingles on a Habitat house, and negotiate in an African street market.
He taught me that peace is hard.
He taught me that worthy goals require patience.
And he taught me that everywhere in the world—in every country, every culture, every community, and at every economic level—there are people every bit as intelligent, loving, hopeful, committed to their families, and invested in a better future as we are.
Those are my grandfather’s lessons.
I love you, Papa.