Off The Record

First, off, I would like to apologize for using "Huh? Huh?" twice in Needledrop as a punchline. It is sloppy to say the least, and I will never do it again.

Second, I would like to provide a personal aside. My mother's father just passed away on Monday. My emotions about this are complex. Sort of. I am sad, which is simple, but not for the predicatble reasons. I loved my grandpa, but really didn't know him as a human being. I knew him as the guy that went to work at the bank every day walked home for lunch to eat and take a nap.

My sadness is rooted more in the fact that Grandpa Strange (yes, that was his real name) was my last grandparent to pass on. I'm 36 years old, and in a sense I am blessed that I made it to 35 with three living grandparents. Since December, I've lost them all. The foundation of my two families has been demolished, and it makes me feel that now, more than ever, I must give up my childhood. I love all of my family members, regardless of our divergent upbringings, but there is no longer anything holding us together.

Later in my Grandpa Strange's life (yes, that was his name), I made my first effforts to get to know him as a person, but by this time, it was too late. He wasn't able to coherently answer my questions. The last time I saw him was a month and a half ago, and I had to spend an hour trying not to cry. His coherence increased as time went on, but he was not the man who spent his life working to make the lives of his children and grandchlidren better. Not the man who spent his time on a battleship in the South Pacific hoping he would come back to his family. It was hard to see the patriarch of a family, who had done well, by all accounts, reduced to being pushed around in a wheelchair.

There's no moral to this. No greater lesson. No one can ever be told to appreciate what they have and take it seriously. I just want to celebrate a man who I didn't know very well, but still had a great influence in my life.

Thanks for enduring. Today, I am a man.