(written through tears, so please excuse typos or incoherence, or just consider them style choices)
In 2009, my mother passed away from breast cancer.
In 2010, my grandmother passed away after breaking her hip, though the death of her firstborn daughter the previous year broke her long before the accidental fall that sent her to the hospital. We all knew this, and she knew that we knew, and there was nothing we could do about it except say goodbye.
In 2011, my cousin Karen, with whom I shared many a laugh and a memorable trip in the back of my grandmother’s Chinook, eating Triscuits (it should be noted, so I do), on the way to see E.T. on the big screen (they really are big when you’re so terribly small), was taken by breast cancer as well ““ at far too young an age and shortly after the birth of her daughter.
And now I learn that cancer, a voracious bastard if ever there was, has decided to come for my grandfather ““ my Grandpa Leonard.
I won’t burden you with too many details, except to say that I never knew my father’s parents, as their lives were ended by a drunk driver when my father was a child, leaving him and eleven siblings behind. Those siblings were snapped up by various family members, but not all of them ““ some were taken in by kind families who provided comfort and a new home. For my father, that family was the Rosenbaums, Leonard & Jean. And although they already had a quite large brood of their own, they made space for one more.
As a child, I knew none of this ““ All I knew was that these were my family”¦ my Grandma Jean, Grandpa Leonard, Uncles Paul, Jimmy, and Lenny, and Aunts Cathy and Cindy. And I was their grandson and nephew (respectively).
For a time when we were waiting for base housing at Tustin, we lived with my grandparents in Mission Viejo. I was 3 years old, and a complete pain in the ass ““ as 3 year-olds are required to be (by law, I believe). I was underfoot and opinionated and moody and selfish and not at all what my grandparents needed in their lives at that age ““ 24/7, anyway.
Still, they took us in when we needed it, and opened up their lives yet again. I learned to swim in their pool, marveled at the jar of sun tea on the picnic table, saw fresh strawberries growing near the hot tub, and played with Sonny & Cher (their dogs). I also learned that my Grandpa Leonard had an acerbic sensibility, fancied himself a chef (who was not to be contradicted on that belief, which happened mostly when someone wanted to get his goat, as he actually was quite the cook), would bicker with my grandmother in the most lovably wry fashion, and was not to be second-guessed, for his opinion was always right. Even when it was wrong.
Over the years, even going back to when I was a small child, you were also virtually guaranteed that a conversation with Grandpa Leonard would result in him making an observation that cut to the quick ““ one that you knew to be true, but were too afraid and ashamed to confront, made all the harsher because of how bluntly he would present it. That, and you knew it was because he cared enough to be concerned.
But when you needed help (as I occasionally did), and even though you had to run the rhetorical gauntlet and present yourself to his unflinching gaze, he was there for you.
He was *always* there.
When I was trying to Kickstarter an iBook version of my children’s book, I shot the video below during a visit with my grandparents last summer. What could be better than freezing a beautiful moment in time, when that moment is your grandparents reading a children’s book you’ve co-written? But as special as that was, it was what I had planned at the end that meant even more to me, as it was a way I could acknowledge to them both just how much their support had meant to me over the years, and how Grandpa Leonard wasn’t always right about some things”¦
Just everything.
No matter what, you’ll always be there, Grandpa Leonard.
And I love you.
…even when you could be a bit of an ass about it.