I've written my grandfather's eulogy about nine or ten times. Let me explain: since I was a little kid, I've always had anxiety problems with worrying about people I knew dying. The way I started trying to control that, when I was in middle school, was by eulogizing them, in my head, thinking of as many beautiful things to say about them as I could, provided all those things were true. Examining the possibility of death made me fear it less, and writing about it made me feel like I had some kind of control over it—writing the speeches made me feel more appreciative of the people in my life as well, which is positive enough, in my opinion, to outweigh the legitimate weirdness of the coping mechanism. I've written a eulogy for probably every person I've been close to since I was ten.
But never more for anyone than for my grandfather. It makes sense, not just because he and I were incredibly close, not because he was a surrogate father for me in a number of ways, but because his death was always a very real, scary possibility. He had a near-fatal heart attack about forty years ago—last rites and everything—and it gave him a very different perspective on life. He was in bonus time, he said. Even when I was young, we'd make plans, and then he'd add, "If I'm still around this Saturday." It was odd, but I adjusted to it, just as I adjusted to the frequency of his hospital visits and health complications.
I don't mean to give the impression that he was a feeble old man—he wasn't. For most of my life, he was in good shape. He played golf several times a week, occasionally well enough to boast to me about it over dinner; he walked every day, often several miles, to help keep his heart in shape. When I was younger he used to pick me up and swing me around, and he used to let my brother and I jump off of the coffee table onto his stomach when we were very little—we never understood this, and I'm pretty sure he enjoyed proving to us he could do it more than we enjoyed doing it.
But a lot of things about my grandfather were misunderstood, often by the people closest to him. The broad strokes are a constant inspiration to me—dirt poor Italian immigrant family, World War II, the GI Bill, a degree in accounting degree from Rutgers, 40 years of constant work in an office and on an orange grove he and my grandmother purchased to make more money, and boom: the Guardabascios are a respectable family. Is it oversimplistic to say that he did that on his own, through sheer will? Yes—but that doesn’t mean it's not true.
But it's the details that I loved about my grandfather. He was smarter (and in different ways) than anybody gave him credit for. A whiz with numbers, yeah, but because of one—one!—literature class he took in the late 1940s, he could still quote Frost and Browning at length. He read Einstein for fun, and would force volumes of his theoretical writings on me, so he'd have someone to talk about them with. A lifelong Catholic, he fell away from the church after the sex abuse scandal and its coverup—because his faith was never blind. I had my first theological arguments with him, when he was kind enough to take an 11 year-old's atheism seriously—we spent the next thirteen years going back and forth about God and the church and the afterlife. A hard-nosed, practical man at times, he was also whimsical, and a dreamer. He would often tell me of the scenarios he invented while walking, where he'd have to explain automobiles or televisions to Genghis Khan, or describe Da Vinci's influence on modern thought and science to the man himself. He took real pleasure in the smallest things in life, a little gift (to the day he died, a stuffed animal I gave him when I was a little kid was on his dresser next to his bed) or a change in the menu at Lascari's, our favorite restaurant.
He was more sensitive than most people knew. He took insults personally, from everyone. I know that he had a reputation for never displaying emotion, even after the deaths of loved ones, but he spoke to me a few times of how painful it was when his youngest brother was hit by a car and killed while they were playing catch. After my dad died, my grandfather and I talked at length about him, about our frustrations and anger, and our good memories and sadness.
He loved my grandmother, too. They made a lot of compromises, and could sometimes fight like hellcats, but in the time I knew them, they were the sweetest married couple I've ever known, and a genuine—if odd—model for me. As a kid I spent a ton of time living with them, even more so after my parents divorced, and in quiet evenings, as they danced to Sinatra, I saw a side of them that I don't think many people did. They were tender with each other, and after my parents' split, they never once fought in front of me.
His love for me, unselfish and fierce, gave me a strength and a confidence and a peace that would otherwise have been lacking. He encouraged me firmly, supporting me without ever pushing me, and making innumerable drives from Whittier to Long Beach to see me. He loved that I wrote, and never pushed me in a different, more practical direction. He welcomed Shar into our family from the first time she made him laugh, about thirty seconds after they met—he looked at me and nodded, and I knew what he meant. I always knew what he meant, whether we were discussing race (a post of its own), religion, life, or the 49ers, who he rooted for on my behalf. I returned the favor by pulling for Rutgers.
He used to chart his life expectancy by my announcements—he'd tell me, "I just want to make it to your graduation," or a milestone of Matt's, or just to Tuesday dinner at Lascari's, which I went to with them, every week, for two and a half years. I wrote a few letters to him as I got older, to thank him, and he was always moved and grateful to have received them, making me feel as though they even began to make up for all that he and my grandmother did for me, supporting me with love, food, and money from childhood to the beginning of my adult life. If it weren't for the car they gave me in high school, the only thing of value that I owned at the time, I would never have started going out with Shar, three years later. There are a thousand stories to tell, stories I'll be telling the rest of my life. I got more time with him than I was entitled to—he saw me graduate high school, college, and get married—and that time was special.
Honestly, I'm tired of writing real eulogies. I've lost my father, my grandmother, and my grandfather in the last two and a half years. That's half of my Guardabascios. Now there is my cousin, my uncle, my brother, and me. As many times as I had to face the possibility of my Popop's death, I never thought it would become a reality. He made it through so many risky operations and recoveries that I stopped worrying. After his first stroke, he recovered completely, and laughed at me for being so concerned. After the big stroke, the one that sent him into a two-year decline, he'd still puzzle out enough words to string a sentence together, to explain his frustration to me, or once before our wedding to tell Shar she was already family, and had been for years. I've had the last several months to prepare for his death, which came three months after my grandmother's (after 60+ years of marriage), but still, I never imagined it would actually happen. How could it? My Popop was invincible.
Labels: Generalness
