On passing

Not sure why I'm posting this - it's just that reading it affected me. From Bloodletting:

A great man has passed

posted Fri, 08/29/08

A few days ago, I received a call from my sister to find out that my maternal grandfather had died.

I wish I could say that I cried like a man about it. You know; the catch in the voice, the few solitary tears that run down the face, and then you just kind of carry on with whatever you were doing.

But I didn't. I wept as a child weeps.. with a face twisted in grief, barely able to articulate my words.

I loved and admired that man greatly. My long suffering parents would seek relief from their rapscallion of a son by shipping him off to his grandfather for a week or two in the summer. He was a large and physically powerful man who could easily keep me in line. We would go to the movies, he would let me do some backyard shooting, and he would tell me stories from his experiences.

He was a stern man with me. Not a joyless man, mind you. After all, he had a stockpile of jokes to tell, it's just that he didn't constantly throw them out at me. He did not tolerate childish behavior even from me as a child. No, he always treated me like an adult, and expected me to act like one in return. He always dealt with me straight and true. He never sugar-coated things or told me little white lies to make me feel better. When he sat me down, and wanted to talk to me, it was always dead in the eyes. It was never as a distraction or a lecture. It was as an old warhorse who had earned his knowledge the hard way. As a child, he had been a jewish kid growing up in a italian neighborhood, and had to fight almost every day to keep his head up. He had worked hard for everything he had ever earned in his life...

This affected me, as I said in my introduction. It did because it's real, and he poured his heart out writing it. I have trouble sharing in that way. I can blog about how someone punched me in the face, how I punched someone in the face, and how to best avoid or inflict the punching, but I don't blog about my personal life much. I have trouble with it. That's all.

Read more it all here.

H/T: Blackfive.