You May Have To Grow Into It

To my son Tommy,

The robe from your Great Grandpa Leo is a bit big for you right now. I'll use it till you  grow into it. You can still use it to dress up as Santa, or a druid, or cult member, or whatever.

Sincerely with live from your dad,

Leo

Going Through Stuff

To my son Tommy,

Not sure if this hat was your Great Grandpa Leo's hat or your Nana Jeanne's hat, but now it is yours. Going through a loved one's stuff after they have passed is so bitter sweet and an emotional roller coaster. To get through, take the laughs where you can get them.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo

Suit Up

To my son Tommy,

Today we actually bury your Great Grandpa Leo. We will drive a two hour trip up to Cumberland to St. Peter and Paul Cemetery and say the last good byes to the vessel that carried your great granddad's soul. From here on out, we will have to talk to him in our prayers. But I think he might already be talking to us.

With a two hour trip ahead and no idea how wet the cemetery grounds are, the question of whether to wear a suit or not came up. At first I thought your great grandfather was being interred in the same cemetery as your Great Great Grandma Pauline Kidwell. All I remember of that cemetery, when we your great grandparents brought up her ashes from Florida, was a bunch of walking and a big huge hill.  I was later told that it was a different cemetery but still worry about how sloppy the grounds might be in addition to the two hour drive. There is no right answer here and each person will make their own choice, but after discussing with your mom we decided on comfort today.

Even though it makes much more sense, I was still feeling a bit bad about the decision. Suiting up was a way to honor your great grandpa. Soon, however, my mind switched focus and started pondering some memories of your Great Grandpa Leo. I remembered the time he and I went to the grocery store and he took a chiquita banana sticker off the nearest banana and put it straight in the middle of his forehead. People would walk up to him and alert him to this fact and he would politely thank them and explained he knew without expounding. They would walk away perplexed and, being the teen or pre-teen I was, I would slink behind him a bit more mortified than before. When I got home, I ran to my dad and my uncles and told them of this craziness. They laughed and told me I was lucky because when they were younger, THEY had to wear the stickers in the grocery.

So re-armed with the lesson from my youth, I pulled on my jeans, determined yet again to not let my appearance define me. I pawed the shirts your mom left out on the bed and though they were great suggestions, I didn't find anything that I wanted to wear. I approached my closet, dove into the middle, and the first shirt I find is a guayabera style shirt, that may have even come from your great grandfather's personal collection. It was settled. I put on the shirt and looked in the mirror, and I imagined myself with a white flop hat and those blu-blocker type sunglasses that go over your regular glasses, and all of a sudden the man in the looking glass was my grandfather with a big grin and I could almost hear him say, "Good on ya boy." I grabbed my rosary and dropped it in the front lower pocket of my shirt to complete the suit up process. Wonder if I can find some chiquita banana stickers for our foreheads.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

No Water

To my son Tommy,

You know what I was thinking this week was missing? A well pump problem at your grandparents house. I mean, that is just what we need with all the family coming into town for a funeral, no water. I'd hope it is just the breaker, but with the way things are going currently I know the entire well pump will need to be replaced. And that is just one of the extra things that have gone wrong this week. I am about to head back out to the Randallstown house because your mom left her phone there. The hits keep coming.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

Frozen Ground

To my son Tommy,

Did you know that frozen ground is a consideration for funeral burials? I sure didn't. But right now, up in Cumberland Maryland, the ground is too frozen to inter your Great Grandpa Leo. In fact your Great Great Aunt Jule (his older sister) who passed 3 weeks ago is still not properly buried. They think the ground will be okay soon (supposed to heat up to 50 or 60 by midweek) so they have scheduled the interment for this Friday the 13th up in Cumberland. That puts the funeral mass for Thursday the 12th at 9:00 am at Holy Family Church in Randallstown and the viewing Wednesday the 11th with the typical 2-4 and 6-8 viewing times up at Haight Funeral Home in Sykesville. That should give enough time for your other great uncles to get into town so they can say goodbye to their father.

Your Nana Jeanne is home from the hospital. She is holding up well and is very happy to be home. She still has to recover some more from her surgeries and needs our prayers but at least she can do so from the comfort of her own bed and chair. I guess, for the most part, everyone is holding up well. We are all grieving, but since your great grandpa was 93 years old and his end was imminent, that does take a little bit of the shock and sting out of it. Death still sucks, mind you, but it eases it ever so slightly.

As for our immediate family, we had some extras thrown on top of the current going ons. My passenger side mirror on my truck got hit and broke off and I am waiting to replace it. So Wednesday, when your great grandpa passed we decided to go see the family and give them hugs despite the impending snowmageddon, we chose your mom's car. Except it started knocking and we made it a quarter of the block before the check engine light came on and we backed up and parked it and took my truck despite the missing mirror. Then the other night, I lost a crown as I ate. Just those fun added stresses of life that we could do without during an already difficult time.

Anyways, we are going to get your mom's car up to the mechanic shop today and yesterday I got my crown fixed at the dentist office. Last night I took a pain pill for the tooth fix before crashing to bed early. It gave a bunch of crazy drug filled dreams. Most of them were nonsense and crazy but I woke up with these words in my head.

I cursed time for passing so quickly and time said "Why curse me? I am neither good nor bad. I exist for you to use as you will. I die and am reborn every instance of life. How you remember my passing is consistent with how you lived each moment. For I am simply the present, the now."
I looked death in the eye and cursed him for what he did to my grandfather and death said "Why curse me? I am neither good nor evil. Time unknowingly brings you to me, and I am obligated by my existence to do my job. I am simply inevitable."
I turned my anger towards God who allows time to pass and death to exist, and he replied "Why curse me? For I AM and this also means I am beyond, beyond death, beyond time. And I sent my only Son so you too can conquer death and live with ME in eternal life. For simply I AM"
Left with no one to curse, no one to deserve my disdain and spite. I began to grieve. When I am done grieving I will continue moving on, hurtling through time towards the inevitable and hopefully beyond.

Drug induced sleep ramblings of my mind that I had to get out on paper. I haven't had such "deep thoughts" since my days of following the Grateful Dead. Do what you will with it.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

What Matters

To my son Tommy,

I am not implying that dying is any walk in the park. I'd imagine the whole end process is not the most enjoyable experience for the deceased while they were alive. But, and perhaps this may seem callous, death is harder on the living than it is on the dead. Let me explain.

When you are dead, most likely nothing really matters to you, at least nothing worldly. When you are dead, you probably don't care what type of wood your casket is made from. When you are dead, you don't have to worry about what suit they pick out for the viewing. When you are dead, you don't have to worry about all this and many many many more worldly things. These were things that mattered to you when you were living and now are things that are someone else's problems.

This is almost universal no matter what you believe. Don't believe in an after life? Then you won't care about much, not even about where they would spread your ashes. Believe in reincarnation? Think that you are coming back as a flower or something? Then you would be busy worrying about fertilized ground to dig your new roots in as the daffodil you have become. Believe in heaven? Then your soul has defeated death and transcended the pettiness of this earthly world and your soul is filled with love and only focuses on what truly matters. Believe in hell? Well, then you have much worse problems to deal with than who made it to the funeral. No, these things just don't matter to the dead.

Then why, if we realize it doesn't matter to them anymore, does the passing of our loved ones leave us with such guilt and regret? Why does grief fill us with the "Would've, should've, could've, if only" mentality? Perhaps it is because the living still think we have more control in this crazy world than we want to admit that we do. That is why we worry about what happened and what didn't happen. That is why we obsess over things that really don't matter to the dead and shouldn't really matter to the living.

Yesterday before your Great Grandpa Leo passed, I spent an hour sitting with him. I left work early, and I went down and sat with him. He didn't respond. Not sure he knew I was there. I stroked his head. I held his hand. I told him I was with him. I told him we all loved him. Occasionally he attempted a guttural response to seem to acknowledge me, but perhaps I was projecting a bit. But after an hour, I left. I didn't recognize that this was the last day and I was not there when he passed and I feel guilty. I only had to stay another two hours and I would have been there when the time came.

Your Grandpa Leo didn't get to see much of his father (Great Grandpa Leo) after they moved him to the home last week. Of course your Grandpa Leo is immune compromised with his chemo treatment for his own problems, so he needs to stay away from hospitals and such. He did get in there to see him a couple days ago though. But he feels guilty for moving him to the home and for not being able to visit as much as he wanted to. We all understand that he was doing what was best, but that doesn't lessen the guilt or make things easier.

And so it goes through the family. Each with his regret. Each thinking, "I should've been there" or "If only I had done this" or "Why didn't I..." Each of these thoughts and regrets and guilty feelings doesn't make a hill of beans to your Great Grandpa Leo right now. He knows he was loved. He knows we were there for him, sometimes in physical presence and sometimes in spirit. If what we believe is correct, than your great grandfather is headed towards those pearly gates and all the things that bothered him on this earth (and that still will bother us for some time to come) probably seem so stupid and petty. He is up there shaking his head and chuckling that big deep belly chuckle of his right now.

I know we are going to have to go through this again, yet I pray no time soon. We have a fair amount of people in our family that are in mortal danger. I often ask for forgiveness from your Grandpa Leo and tell him that I am going to make a bunch more mistakes before his brain cancer ends up running its course. He laughs and tells me he loves me and then laughs again and tells me "it" (whatever the it we are talking about at the time, be it money, or your grandmom, or the house, or donating his body to science, or all the petty worldly stuff) won't be his problem anymore.

So let me make you this promise my son. I forgive you. I already forgave you unconditionally the day you were born but I forgive you now again. And after I pass, you will know I forgave you and it will be up to you to forgive yourself. Because, I forgive you for any "would've, should've, could've, if only" you can think of when I die. I forgive you for mistakes you might make. I forgive you for picking out the wrong tie for my viewing. I forgive you for grieving "wrong". I forgive you for laughing. I forgive you for writing out your feelings for the world to see on the internet, if that is your thing. I forgive you for any time we missed together. I forgive you for tending to the matters of the living while I was dying. I forgive you for not verbalizing those things held in your heart and that you will begin questioning if you said enough. I pardon any possible transgression you can think of when the end on this earth comes for me. Because it all doesn't matter. What matters is to know I was loved and you were loved and that continues on, no matter what.

Sincerely with love from your dad,
Leo

P.S. The day I went up to the home to see your great grandpa, as I was leaving I stopped to talk to the nurses. We kabitzed a bit and we talked about who I was related to. They were used to seeing your Great Uncle Kevin up there often. They told me how they got freaked out the day before when your Grandpa Leo visited his father. Your grandfather and great grandfather both look so similar right now that the nurses thought your great grandfather had gotten out of his bed and was walking the halls. They thought this perhaps was a miraculous recovery until they figured it out. We all laughed out loud at the mix-up. And for even that I feel guilty.

The World Keeps Spinning

To my son Tommy,

When asked how he was your Great Grandpa Leo used to say, "The world keeps spinning, I just try to hold on." It used to tickle him thinking of this world as a big giant merry-go-round hurtling through space and that we needed to hold on tight, sometimes by a single blade of grass, or risk being thrown from the ride. He doesn't have to hold on anymore. He passed away tonight. God rest his soul. He was a great man by any standards. He loved us all very much and lived a very blessed life for just over ninety three years. He taught us all how to live and how to laugh. The world keeps spinning, now we are left to hold on the best we can, and with the memory and teachings and love of such a great man, hopefully we can hang on a little stronger.

Sincerely with love from your dad,

Leo