In Memoriam

Nothing worse than an author who stakes out an address, starts a perfectly nice little blog, then abandons it, never to post again. I won't do that, I promise.

Unfortunately, I was out of town this weekend. My grandfather passed away on Sunday the 5th, and was buried on Friday the 10th. I wasn't going to even mention it here, simply because I didn't want this blog to take a down tone too early on, but after giving it some thought, this is something important to me, moreso than just about anything else I'll post on this site. In fact, I can tell already that I'm going to ramble on for longer than I originally intended when I started this entry.

My grandfather was just short of his 87th birthday. For about 85 of those years, he was blessed with good health, and up until about six months ago his health problems had been very minor. Lately, his quality of life had begun to slip, as he'd just had surgery the Monday before his death to remove two tumors from his lungs. (He was the only one of my grandparents who still smoked by the time I was born, but even he'd given up the habit fifteen or twenty years ago. The story, as I'm told, is that one evening, he finished the last cigarette in his pack, crumpled it up, and said "I quit." And he never smoked even one again. That was the kind of person he was.)

The funeral was small, at a Catholic church in Honesdale, Pa., where he lived and my mother grew up. (In fact, my grandfather lived his entire life in the house where he was born.) It was a nice service, and he was remembered fondly. My brother, two cousins, my father, an uncle, and I served as his pallbearers. That wasn't something I was looking forward to, but in the end, I was honored to be one of the ones to bring him to his rest.

It was a very surreal family gathering. The mood really wasn't as mournful as I originally expected, and I think my grandmother gets the credit for that. She really is an amazing woman, coping with the death of her constant companion for the last 55 years as well as she is. Fortunately, she won't be alone--two of my aunts and uncles still live right there in town.

On Saturday afternoon, we gathered to watch the Notre Dame-Michigan football game--my grandfather graduated from ND in 1938 and watched just about every single Notre Dame game he could see. My grandparents even travelled to a couple of bowl games in better years. Of course, anyone who knows college football expected Michigan to hand the Irish their own heads, but I guess my grandfather has already found someone's ear to whisper in up there, because it was, in fact, Notre Dame who outplayed their opponents in just about every way.

In memory of Jack G. Rickert, 1917-2004.