This is me and my Grandpa Stuart (my father's father) when I was about three. I'm sad that I don't have any actual memories of him. He lived north of Chicago, and I saw him maybe once or twice a year. The summer I turned six, he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and he was gone before Christmas. He was only 69.
I do remember two things about visiting him in the hospital that summer. First, the roof rack we had on the top of our baby blue camper van got crunched by an overhead beam in the parking garage. We were too tall. Second, I had to stay in the waiting room while my parents went in to see him. I was too young.
Everything I know about Grandpa Stuart makes me think I would have liked him. He was an adventurer with a big heart.
2 comments:
Hi Margy.....I know what it's like to love and feel you know a grandparent that you pretty much only know from family lore. Three of my grandparents died when I was around4 or 5, although not many, I do have one or two direct memories of them each. But, my paternal grandmother died before I was born and the way they tell it she was one of the warmest, funniest, interesting women you could meet. She was a milliner, a singer and piano player at the silent movies, an avid cook that family legend has it would load a buffet with pies and deserts of all kinds and that it is she that taught my mother how to cook and all about style. She had a big sense of humor and used to chase my grandfather around the house because "he's so handsome". Memere Lague also was known as a psychic! And imagine, I grew up feeling I knew her and we've never met. For a while when I was a child I hoped maybe I was her reincarnated, because when I was born it was she they saw in my face. But I know I can't fill those shoes, but I like to believe that part of my spirit is free to be myself thanks to "knowing" her.
I love that, Janine!
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