"Keep looking up." -Grandad
Why I took a break last week
No pop culture today — except for several references, since pop culture is the filter through which I view all reality — just a personal update and reflection. [*cue the energy of a room where someone has just said, “Before we start, I’d like to share a brief devotional.”*] If you’re in it exclusively for the pop culture, we’ll be back in less than a week for Halloweeny stuff! :)
It’s been a tough few weeks for the world, huh? Every day, it seems, the news feels so unbearably heavy.
My family’s life is heavy in a much smaller way—though large to us. First, Mom faced several setbacks with her stem cell transplant, from insurance holdups to difficulty getting enough stem cells to a surprise Covid exposure.
Then, the day before the transplant finally happened — last Tuesday — her dad, my Grandad, passed away.
We knew it would probably happen soon; he had Stage 4 cancer and was quickly getting sicker. But “soon” meant…weeks? Months? Even a year? For him to die the day before her transplant, when she couldn’t be with him and couldn’t come to the funeral, felt particularly cruel.
I call a lot of things diabolical [like how it’s impossible to open a plastic produce bag at the grocery store without licking your finger first]—but this actually seems like it is.
I also call a lot of things unbearable [e.g. when your sock gets wet]—but this actually feels like it is.
I wrote in my journal last week, because I journal now after a 10-year hiatus during which I felt the “examined life” wasn’t all it was cracked up to be: “If this was a movie, you’d say it was terrible writing.”
Like: Are we in a soap opera??? Am I trapped in a less Face-Tuned version of This is Us? Where is Mandy Moore? I demand to speak with the manager of Jumping the Shark!! Are we Scamanda and we don’t know it?? Who will even believe this when we tell them?? These are all sentences that have come out of my mouth this week.
This is like my least favorite story, Romeo & Juliet. A tragedy made worse by the most soul-crushing plot device in literature: Terrible timing.
[Though, not to get all woo-woo on you, but it also felt, as a family member shared with me, almost “as if he died to give your mom life.”]
But I came here today actually just to share a beautiful thing from and about my Grandad.
Back in 2018, he sent everyone in the family a letter. Typed and printed, each individually signed by his hand. It was right before his 80th birthday, and he said it was a good time “to think about my eventual demise.”
For those of you who didn’t know Errol, imagine, perhaps, Gandalf mixed with Larry David. Or, if you’ve seen While You Were Sleeping, an almost exact replica of the dad played by Peter Boyle. [“Would you wanna see Dustin Hoffman save the Alamo?”]
He’s wise and deeply thoughtful, but also a guy who would spend hours sitting at the front window making jokes about all the neighbors who walked by. He was a father of four [completely crazy] girls, CFO of the Baton Rouge Catholic Diocese, and in retirement, a volunteer at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum.
He loved space. Outer space. The planets, the stars. He would text us to make sure we knew about an eclipse or a Super Moon or just a night when Jupiter was going to be especially bright. Thanks to him, the first book I remember falling in love with was the National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe. He wrote us a monthly email he called Fun With Astronomy.
His refrain was: “Keep looking up!” He loved us so well.
Anyways, I wanted to share a brief excerpt of that letter that he wrote back in 2018, thinking about his eventual demise.
People say that I don’t travel much any more. Not so. I am a space wanderer on our wonderful planet. Consider this: the Earth spins at 1,035 miles per hour, while it travels around the Sun at 67,000 miles per hour, and the Sun and Earth travel around the Milky Way galaxy at 458,000 miles per hour !! During my 80 years I have traveled 368,655,328,000 miles and I continue this voyage with gratitude for the privilege.
If I were to leave you anything of great value, it would be love, love of creation and its creatures. I know I love creation when I feel gratitude for it. I know I love someone when I care about their life, what happens to them and praying that it is always good.
If I were to leave you anything about learning it would be to appreciate God’s creation, from the tiniest particles to the whole universe. And I wish you curiosity, that seeking of knowledge about things, history, art, science, philosophy, literature, etc. etc. and God.
Oh my! I realize that, as your Dad, I could legitimately be judged as biased—but this is (objectively speaking) an extraordinarily beautiful and (subjectively speaking) a deeply moving tribute to Grandad (a.k.a. Dad G). Tears are welling up in my eyes. I’m keeping it. Thank you, dear Hannah, for this.
I love you <3
Did you hear us reminisce this past weekend about how when pluto was deemed a "dwarf" planet, he put dwarf in quotation markes in his emails XD That fact fills my heart! As a true student of science he included it's new classification correctly by putting dwarf there at all, but as Grandad, he stuck to his guns that pluto is a fully fledged planet!