an obituary

Feb 20, 2008 21:11

I'm tired. For those of you who haven't been getting the worst of my hyper-depressed posts recently, my grandfather died. He was interred yesterday. So I went home Sunday and spent three days with my mourning family. But I'm not actually personally that upset about him dying. I know that sounds callous, but I really wasn't that close to him. Sometimes I wish I'd known him better - the obituary was lovely, and I learned things about him that I had never known - but on the other hand, I'm not sure I would have liked him if I had. I've seen older photographs of him, and they had several out for the visitation; his personality comes through remarkably well. He adored me, and I deferred to him, so we got along fairly well, but he was a very arrogant, stubborn, self-centered man. He was also intelligent and hard-working and constitutionally undauntable. And handsome, which is a startling thing to see in one's grandfather. He was very handsome. Also highly traditional in terms of social custom if not in terms of business-type things. He was an entrepreneur and a patriarch. He was blunt and opinionated, and he never saw any reason to moderate his speech for anyone else. He valued family, even if, in later years, he often mistreated his wife and children. He was deeply religious, and he loved the things of his home country. He delighted in giving his female granddaughters antique silver jewelry, and on the walls of his room he hung traditional robes. He loved to play backgammon, which was traditionally the game the men of his homeland would gather and play. He would have energetic games with my father and his other sons, but he also taught, or tried to teach, my sister and me. He also became a US citizen, and he was happy here, too. At his and my grandmother's old house, rosebushes lined the driveway, seemingly two dozen in a child's memory. He loved roses. My mother bought something like 20 dozen or more for the funeral; some, the white ones, we used in decoration, and the others we tied with white ribbon and rosemary and gave to people to remember him. Memory eternal.

That's what the Orthodox say when someone dies: "memory eternal." I suppose I could talk about the days I spent at home and the services and the internment, but there are so many small important moments that this post would be a mile long if I included them, and I don't want to do that.

So this is my obituary for him, I suppose. I wasn't particularly close to him, and I won't miss him often or badly; I'm not sorry he died. But he was a human being, a great one, in his way, and beautiful, and, as are all human beings, flawed.

I'm glad that he lived, both bad and good. May someone be able to say so much of me when I die.

thinky-ness, family

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