My grandfather passed away and I just heard about it tonight....

[slinkerwink]

I'm so upset right now. I didn't want him to die----I wanted him to hold on so I could go and see him for spring break. I wanted to hear more stories about Turkey, and get to know him better. I was afraid of him as a small child because he seemed so gruff and he had on those old 70s tinted glasses. He'd laugh hard and for a long time though. I wasn't so afraid of him anymore when he taught me how to play ping-pong.

Grandpa was a ping-pong champion back in the 1950s. He stood me at the green ping-pong table, taught me how to hold the paddle correctly, and fielded the ball back and forth to me across the table. He smiled because I was fielding the ball correctly. I remember the summers where Grandpa would stand outside and grill hamburgers, and watch my brothers and I play with Karen, the golden retriever.

I was deaf, so I really couldn't communicate with Grandpa because he spoke gruffly. However, my speech comprehension got better with the years, and I could understand Grandpa. Last spring, I went to visit him and Nana to see what their new house was like. The Grandpa I got to know there was funny and we had great debate about politics. He was a conservative Republican and I was a leftist Democrat. We'd get involved in political debates, then Grandpa would get this twinkle in his eye and laugh. Grandpa was still particular about his TV remote so I couldn't watch any of my favorite programs. I spent a lot of time on the computer instead. I wish I had spent more time with him instead of on that computer.

Grandpa would serve me breakfast every morning which was a bowl of raspberries with cream. He said that the raspberries in America were so much bigger than the black raspberries he'd picked in Turkey as a child. He also made me turkish coffee which was really yummy. I had never tasted turkish coffee before. I had it for the second time here at college at this small Moroccan cafe. One evening, I was lying down on the couch with this scottish angora wool blanket over me. I'd looked at the tag earlier and it had said "Made in Scotland." Grandpa stopped by, looked down at me, and boomed, "Do you know where that blanket came from?"

I looked up at him, curious what he was going to say, and said, "No, where did it come from?"

A smile came over Grandpa's face, and he said, "It came from Turkey! The best angora blankets come from there! You are wearing one of the finest blankets there is."

I smiled and thanked him for telling me. He loved his country, and told me stories about his family there. His mother had died of a brain aneurysm in the kitchen when he was thirteen, and he and his brother had come home that day to find their mother lying in the kitchen. I felt sad about that. I promised Grandpa that I would name one of my daughters after his mother. It's a promise I intend to keep. Grandpa was a neurosurgeon here in the United States, and he had come to America from Vienna where he had studied at the University of Vienna.

He had escaped Vienna because he'd been interrogated by the Nazis for revealing to his father in a letter that the American planes were flying over Vienna. I think about him in that SS headquarters, being beaten across the face before being released. He had loved a woman in Vienna who had died when a bomb had landed on her apartment building. He had seen war. When he came to America, he fell in love with my grandmother, Nana, who was a nurse.

They celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary four years ago. I remember that party. We were seated around a square table and we felt awkward because the family hadn't been together in so long. There were my aunts who I really hadn't heard from, and my uncle who had rarely gotten in touch with my father. There we were, the children of my father's first marriage, and my half-siblings, the result of my father's second marriage. Grandpa looked around the room, heard a bzz in the room, and looked down at the table. He smashed down a rolled-up newspaper against a fly that had annoyed him. The reaction stunned us into laughter. The ice was broken, and we relaxed, enjoying the party.

Grandpa....I'm going to miss you so much. I will always hold last year's spring break in my memory forever because I really got to know you, Grandpa. I'm glad I did but I wish there had been more time.

I love you, Grandpa.