Lessons From My Grandfather
Say what you will about The Simpsons, but this image felt very appropriate.
As with many other major historical events, I still remember where I was that day.
One dreary afternoon in February 2023, I received the call from my mother, and she seemed to think the matter was urgent. She told me that her father, my grandfather, had passed away. And I’ll admit that on some level, I was relieved, because he wasn’t suffering anymore. Given that he was 97 years old when he died, and had suffered from dementia for several years prior, I felt as though I had already lost him three years before I actually did. Of course, it’s achingly sad when anyone dies, even if you’ve seen it coming from a mile away. Nobody lives forever, after all - more on that later.
My grandfather was an exceptional man. Most people say such things about their deceased relatives, but in this case I truly feel that way. He was born into a Jewish family that felt reluctant to express that culture; anti-Semitism was rampant at the time, even if it didn’t carry the force of law like it did in Europe. However, he is the reason I consider myself Jew-ish, even if I’ve never fully practiced the faith. Maybe it comes from going to many of my friends’ bar and bat mitzvahs when I was younger.
He was also incredibly active in his community. Again, that might sound like a cliché statement, but it’s true. He and his wife, my grandmother, helped found a Unitarian Universalist congregation in their hometown, and he was an active member for the last nearly thirty years of his life. He was also fascinated by aviation, having acquired a private pilot’s license in adulthood. When he and my grandmother moved into a retirement home, he continued playing table tennis into his early nineties. And for the record, he was pretty good at it, even against someone as agile as my brother!
A flaming chalice, a symbol of Unitarian Universalism.
My grandfather’s memorial service was held that May at the UU congregation that he’d helped establish. It was a somewhat gray spring day, and my siblings and I dressed up for the occasion. When my uncle gave a speech about what his father had meant to him, I was struck by a pair of quotes he highlighted, lines my grandfather had so often used in life.
Give a damn: If you’re going to try something, give it your best effort. Don’t half-ass a task under any circumstances; show your friends, family, and loved ones that you care about what you’re doing. During my time writing fanfiction, I would have done well to take pride in my craft as opposed to how many readers I was getting from various countries.
Just because something is good doesn’t mean more is better: This can mean a number of different things. You might tell this to someone who’s tempted to have an extra slice of cake at a birthday party, or who wants to overindulge in alcohol before they have to drive home from a restaurant. However, the way I see it, you should savor what you have, whether it means the time you have on this planet or any material possession. Although my grandfather lived a relatively long life, 97 years, he never took a single day for granted.
Me in my outfit for the memorial service.
As one of his surviving relatives, I was honored to deliver a two-minute eulogy for my grandfather. I’ll leave you with this anecdote, which I mentioned during the eulogy.
When I was 8 or 9 years old, I remember visiting my grandfather in his bedroom. We talked for a while about what we wanted, and my aging grandfather said he wanted to live forever. Even at that young age, I knew that immortality was a myth; at least, to the extent that it exists on Earth. I thought my grandfather was either completely joking or expressing his eccentricity, and neither would have been out of place for him.
As I noted in the eulogy, that clearly didn’t happen in the literal sense. He is no longer with us. However, as I was writing the speech I’d eventually give, it occurred to me that maybe he wasn’t talking about immortality in the literal sense. Maybe instead he meant that he wanted to live forever in the memories of the people who cared about him. Again, perhaps that’s an obvious point to make, but sometimes it’s only when the loss of a loved one stares you in the face that you realize how true it is.
As long as people keep talking about you, you’ll never truly die. Isn’t that the only sort of afterlife you’d want?
If you spend a lot of time on Reddit like I do, you might have seen a number of people saying something like that. Of course, the Internet is not real life; I’d hazard a guess that Redditors are less religious than the population at large, and not just those frequenting r/atheism. However, there are legitimate questions about whether living forever would really be worth it. At the same time, I don’t want death to truly be the end of our experience. Maybe I’m just not mature enough to acknowledge the truth, or maybe there is in fact something to the human desire to believe in something supernatural. Maybe the evidence suggesting that prehistoric humans believed in something akin to religion isn’t actually a coincidence. I just don’t know.
While I don’t know much, I do know one thing. I am determined to live my life to the fullest, making every day count just like my grandfather did. I want people to remember me. Maybe this blog will be an essential part of the historical record a hundred years from now when scholars look back on the 2024 election and its consequences. Maybe it can provide some solace knowing that I’m contributing to the historical record of the next four years with sage articles like this one. Who knows? Either way, I have my grandfather to thank for this.
I miss you, G-Pa.
