Post by Zoom on Dec 29, 2013 1:33:02 GMT -6
So my grandfather on my Dad's side had been sick for a while. Cancer. Twenty years ago he was told he'd be dead in two years, but he wasn't. He bought a boat and called it the Reprieve, and I spent a lot of time on that boat. They came down from Montreal every summer for a few months. When I was little I couldn't pronounce "Grandpa" and the best I could do was "Boppa" so that's what he was called.
But anyway he'd been getting radically worse over the last couple years and he died a couple weeks ago. We'd seen it coming, of course, but it sucked, understandably. As with my Dad's mom a couple years ago, I wished I'd been born even just a few years earlier, so I could've had a chance to know them in an adult-adult relationship, instead of a grandparent-grandkid relationship. Lots of questions I wish I'd asked.
So we fly up to Montreal last-minute for the funeral and to keep my grandmother company for her first Christmas-without. The funeral is being organized, last-minute of course, especially since we were getting terrible weather (you might have heard how Toronto has been without power for a while...it's that same storm I only just barely missed). My sister and I are to read a poem and say a few words.
Cut to: the day of the funeral. We're there hours early setting up - they had no idea how many people were coming, and it's a good thing we set up those extra chairs because the final count was around 200. Which of course was a huge surprise to me because, you know, he was just my Boppa.
And here I am, listening / participating in the service, people who I've never met standing up to speak about this man I apparently never knew, finding out that yes, he was my grandfather, but he was also a lot of other people.
Anyway here's the obit. I understand that it would be hard to give a stalker a deeper mine of info, but I'm going to go ahead and assume anybody with any respect for me at all wouldn't go and Google this.
They didn't mention it in the obituary, of course, but he was in AA for ~30 years and sponsored a great deal of people. So I'm seeing there were at least four major spheres he walked in. And this is why I called this post 'Legacy' - I'd never really thought about mine before, my legacy that is, who I came from, besides pitying my parents and worrying I'd turn out like them. But seeing all the people my grandfather was - meaning of course he'd had a life well lived - well I'm starting to think maybe I owe it to my name to be the best I can be...and that maybe it's not such a cursed name after all.
But anyway he'd been getting radically worse over the last couple years and he died a couple weeks ago. We'd seen it coming, of course, but it sucked, understandably. As with my Dad's mom a couple years ago, I wished I'd been born even just a few years earlier, so I could've had a chance to know them in an adult-adult relationship, instead of a grandparent-grandkid relationship. Lots of questions I wish I'd asked.
So we fly up to Montreal last-minute for the funeral and to keep my grandmother company for her first Christmas-without. The funeral is being organized, last-minute of course, especially since we were getting terrible weather (you might have heard how Toronto has been without power for a while...it's that same storm I only just barely missed). My sister and I are to read a poem and say a few words.
Cut to: the day of the funeral. We're there hours early setting up - they had no idea how many people were coming, and it's a good thing we set up those extra chairs because the final count was around 200. Which of course was a huge surprise to me because, you know, he was just my Boppa.
And here I am, listening / participating in the service, people who I've never met standing up to speak about this man I apparently never knew, finding out that yes, he was my grandfather, but he was also a lot of other people.
Anyway here's the obit. I understand that it would be hard to give a stalker a deeper mine of info, but I'm going to go ahead and assume anybody with any respect for me at all wouldn't go and Google this.
They didn't mention it in the obituary, of course, but he was in AA for ~30 years and sponsored a great deal of people. So I'm seeing there were at least four major spheres he walked in. And this is why I called this post 'Legacy' - I'd never really thought about mine before, my legacy that is, who I came from, besides pitying my parents and worrying I'd turn out like them. But seeing all the people my grandfather was - meaning of course he'd had a life well lived - well I'm starting to think maybe I owe it to my name to be the best I can be...and that maybe it's not such a cursed name after all.
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)) xD
