my grandfather

as many of you already know, my grandfather passed away yesterday afternoon, september 1, 2005, after battling bone marrow cancer and alztheimer's. he was 86 years old. though i knew it was coming, and it was for the best, i'm incredibly sad, more than i thought i would be even, that he's no longer occupies the same space as i do, and that he's no longer present, palpably and tangibly. and i miss him. i guess that i missed him the last time i saw him, in march, when he had very little grasp of the world around him -- of his senses, his desires, his family. he was a body, and he looked like my grandfather -- in rare moments even acted like him -- but he was for the most part gone already. his death has just forced me to finally confront this -- that people you love, and who have been there your entire life, go somewhere else. or don't. but that they disappear in the form in which you know them.

well, i don't want to make this too long, cheesy, trite, or sentimental. just wanted to pay a little tribute to my grandfather. an amazing, sweet, sensitive, and quiet man.
he was shy and awkward, a nerdy-looking jew with thick, black glasses. when he met my grandmother, i don't think he'd ever had a girlfriend. my grandmother's father was a little bit taken aback at this near-mute geeky guy taking out his beautiful and vivacious daughter. on their first date, he drove her to a restaurant at niagara falls and somehow, by the second date, they were engaged. they had four girls together--elyse, deborah, susan, and jane--and rarely did i see them bicker. my grandfather discovered an element, promethium, when in his late 1920s. he worked on the manhattan project in oak ridge, tennessee, and for a year could not tell my grandmother what he did when he left home everyday. he was a renowned professor at the University of Buffalo. okay, he was a terrible speaker, he mumbled and stuttered, had no charisma, and his students probably found him mind-numbingly dull. but he was brilliant. as a grandfather, i remember him mostly for singing in a n exaggerated frank sinatra voice to make us laugh, of him sitting in his rocking chair consuming trashy mystery and after trashy mystery, and getting wildly impassioned (for him) about the success of the buffalo bills that year. he was pretty devastated after that 4-year super bowl debacle!

anyway, that's it. i won't go on too long. . . .
this is a cute little link to his biography, complete with vintage photo of him completely nerded out. and a recent photo of him last thanksgiving, that's really hilarious
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http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev25-34/chapter2sb6.htm