LogFAQs > #895860856

My grandfather passed away this last night/this morning. He was 82. Weirdly, his younger brother died earlier this week.

He had been unwell for a while, following a heart attack in the early fall, and had been in and out of hospital/nursing home/rehabilitation in the intervening time. Ultimately, it was the flu that killed him. He went to bed last night and they realized he had passed sometime around midnight.

He and my grandmother moved to Florida shortly after I was born, so we were never as close as I am with my dad's parent's. We'd see each other for parts of a few weeks every summer, when they would escape the Florida summer for New England, and when I was younger, on occasional family vacations to Florida (the last one was just before 9/11).

Those visits were sometimes fraught with tension, especially as we both got older. He had a bad temper and it was impossible to know how long the fuse was at any given time. During the World Cup in 2006, he asked what the appeal of soccer was, and after explaining it to him, he became incensed, calling me a whole bunch of things: rude, a know-it-all, 'some kind of wise guy' and said he was going to 'beat the snot outta [me]. This was in my living room, in front of my parents, my grandmother, and my brother, and the previous night I had given up my bed and slept on the couch so my grandparents had a place to sleep. Being 18 (and having a fairly long history of getting in fights at that point), I stood up to him and he stormed out. The event has never been spoken of since.

That's one of the worst examples, but he had a tendency to behave this way towards me, and only towards me. When I graduated high school (and college), my grandparents sent cards with some cash. When my brother and each of my cousins graduated from high school and/or college, they flew up for the ceremony and the party. He's never had any issues with my brother, and my cousins have generally dismissed anything I've asked them as if my questions are outlandish or groundless. I know he and my mom sometimes had issues when they were younger, but she'll never talk about them, to me or to anyone else.

But at the same time, I have these good memories, too. He was there when I was at my first Red Sox game. I sat between him and my dad. I remember going to Busch Gardens in Tampa when I was little and going on rides with him (and being amazed that he would go on the big, scary rides that I couldn't go on because I was too small, even though at 5'3", he wasn't that big himself). Golfing with him as a kid in Maine when Air Force One zoomed maybe a hundred or so feet above us to land at the adjacent airport.

I don't know if I would say I love(d) him. Maybe when I was young, I guess. It's not like I didn't want to love him, but he made it so incredibly difficult sometimes. I'm sure I didn't always make things easier for myself, either, but still.

I've been typing this piecemeal throughout the day, not even knowing whether or not I'd hit the post button at the end. It's weird, being in a position where no one I'm close to really empathizes with me. My dad, having a level of distance by virtue of it not being his father, understands that grampy wasn't always kind to me, but that's kind of the extent of his understanding of things.

I don't know what any of you guys have experienced, but if any of you have been through anything similar, I'm all ears.
---

"Mighty boobs." - Vlado