Auf Wedersehen, Unca Junk
I got home from a martial arts class tonight and my dad called. I guessed, by the way he opened up the convo--and I was right.
My Uncle Frank Gross is dead. The facility called my cousin Michael to let him know he was sinking earlier this evening, and they didn't expect him to last--so I guess he got over there and he was able to be there at the end.
I have not seen my Uncle Frank since 2004 or thereabouts, when he came up with Aunt Jean for a visit. He was already rather fuzzy by then. The next year, Katrina, totally tipped him into hell. He and Aunt Jean had to leave the place they'd lived in for over 40 years. Via the Superdome. Not at all good for someone in the middle stages of Alzheimer's.
The most recent update I'd hear, just a couple of months or so ago, was that the only thing he was connecting with any more was Communion. Somehow Aunt Jean had gotten some kind of dispensation to bring the pyx to him from time to time.
I'm hoping there was a priest there, for the family's sake--but I know God Himself won't mind.
Uncle Frank was about 5 or so years older than my mother. He followed in the family tradition of serving in the Navy, but then he went on to be a beatnik artist, met and married another beatnik artist, and went off to teach for decades at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. He was the funniest, sweetest, most aggravating, smartest, most generous man. Like my dad, he gave men a good name. He teased the hell out of everyone he loved, drove my mother crazy (Sweet Sue, he called her), cracked wise in a German accent, perpetually wore baggy linen shorts with the crotch damn near to his knees, introduced us all to New Orleans again and again and again, dressed up as Odin All-Father in a hilarious serious of photos, shot my mother's best friend in the butt with a BB gun, opened his house to me and my best friend for the 1984 World's Fair, and taught generations of people about art and god knows what else.
The damned disease was what robbed him and us; I think the family is mostly relieved at the death.
For vanity's sake, I may scan some pics some time and post them.
My Uncle Frank Gross is dead. The facility called my cousin Michael to let him know he was sinking earlier this evening, and they didn't expect him to last--so I guess he got over there and he was able to be there at the end.
I have not seen my Uncle Frank since 2004 or thereabouts, when he came up with Aunt Jean for a visit. He was already rather fuzzy by then. The next year, Katrina, totally tipped him into hell. He and Aunt Jean had to leave the place they'd lived in for over 40 years. Via the Superdome. Not at all good for someone in the middle stages of Alzheimer's.
The most recent update I'd hear, just a couple of months or so ago, was that the only thing he was connecting with any more was Communion. Somehow Aunt Jean had gotten some kind of dispensation to bring the pyx to him from time to time.
I'm hoping there was a priest there, for the family's sake--but I know God Himself won't mind.
Uncle Frank was about 5 or so years older than my mother. He followed in the family tradition of serving in the Navy, but then he went on to be a beatnik artist, met and married another beatnik artist, and went off to teach for decades at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts. He was the funniest, sweetest, most aggravating, smartest, most generous man. Like my dad, he gave men a good name. He teased the hell out of everyone he loved, drove my mother crazy (Sweet Sue, he called her), cracked wise in a German accent, perpetually wore baggy linen shorts with the crotch damn near to his knees, introduced us all to New Orleans again and again and again, dressed up as Odin All-Father in a hilarious serious of photos, shot my mother's best friend in the butt with a BB gun, opened his house to me and my best friend for the 1984 World's Fair, and taught generations of people about art and god knows what else.
The damned disease was what robbed him and us; I think the family is mostly relieved at the death.
For vanity's sake, I may scan some pics some time and post them.