"Last week, grandma read me the eulogy grandpa wrote a few years ago for his good friend, Sam Morrison. They met and become friends at a party just after WWII. After Sam recounted his feats of valor in the Pacific theater, Grandpa looked him in the eye and said, “ever heard of the battles of Okinawa or Iwo Jima? Well I was nowhere near them. I was holed up on a repair ship off of Terminal Island, California. We never went anywhere.”
It was the beginning of a seventy-year friendship, during which the two each married the loves of the lives, raised a bunch of kids, and shared countless laughs and card games and just the right amount of martini lunches to remain employed. As I was listening to grandma, tears rolling down my face from how hard I was laughing, I momentarily felt sad for grandpa, because he outlived all the friends who would have honored him with a eulogy half as fitting as the one he wrote for Sam.
And then I laughed at myself, because we all know that the only thing the people in this room possibly love more than grandpa is the spotlight. I’m not exaggerating when I say I am in three separate group texts filled with people that pitched themselves as the perfect candidate to deliver these remarks. Was the choice unanimous?
Far from it.
Did a shadow faction of my supporters rise, whispering my name as the merit of my selection became unassailable?
Absolutely not.
Truthfully, many spoke against me. Their names are now marked down in my little book, and they better stop calling me for free legal advice. Lucky for me, Mike Hubbell passed the mic and people were worried that if Tyler followed my dad everyone would say “Hey, didn’t that guy just sit back down?”
Viola, the stage is mine.
There’s never been a shortage of stories or storytellers in this family, and as we’ve gotten together over the last few weeks, some fan favorites have been told again. As grandkids, we’ve heard stories our whole lives about grandpa as an athlete, as a writer, a world traveler, how he hobnobbed with world leaders and played golf with Jack Nicklaus. And while we appreciate those stories (I mean I enjoyed the Shining as much as anybody) to be honest, by the time most of the grandkids came around, grandpa didn’t have a byline at the most widely circulated news magazine in the world, a scratch golf game, or connections to any famous people we were interested in meeting (which for the record at that time were Mickey Mouse or any of the Ninja Turtles).
On the contrary, as we grandkids came on the scene, grandpa was slowing down and headed towards easy street. No more deadlines, all his kids except MJ were grown up and let’s be honest, by the time she was came around both her parents were coasting.
He thought he was going to relax into retirement, a time when, in his words, “one went fishing, or played golf, or went to afternoon baseball games, or did whatever else one felt inclined to do.” Finally, he had something that I imagine you don’t have much of while raising nine kids and reporting world news, and defeating communism and saving democracy (like superman if he never took off his glasses)– and something that is essential if you want to succeed in your new position as ringleader to a group of tiny people who don’t care that you once sat in the oval office across from Nixon and Kissinger, can we please go ride the trolley? Finally, he had time, and we were determined to fill it all up.
My mom has a policy that any time one of her kids invites her to do something, she says yes. This is how I got her to tagalong to a community theater production in which the sole actress spends the entire play stuck in a mound of dirt, and how she and my brother Zack found themselves the only two people in the theater watching the Green Inferno, a cannibalistic thriller upon which one critic commented, “We see certain films so you never, ever have to, and The Green Inferno is one such atrocity.” But as she has explained it to me, she figures that as long as she keeps saying yes we will never stop inviting her. Clearly, she borrowed that philosophy from grandpa, because he also said yes to any opportunity to share an ice cream, watch a game, cheer for us, or party with us and he always let me play on credit when I asked him to play cards, no matter how many thousands of dollars he assured me I was already in the hole from our last game.
Sharing custody of grandpa was easy when it only involved taking the four of us to Sebastian Joe’s, or inviting a chosen few to spend a week down on Marco Island. But by the time there were 28 of us, Henry Ford would have marveled at his productivity.
Did Grandpa love sports and musical theater? Almost as much as forwarding joke emails. But even those passions have their limits. It’s all fun and games watching Woody and Holden march through the prep bowl (and Tyler wanted me to point out here that he, too, played in the prep bowl), but have you ever been to an 8th grade girls’ b squad volleyball game? Grandpa has, and he didn’t even bring needlepoint to work on the whole time. Katelyn and I may have occasionally forced him to witness lackluster improvised talent shows after dinner, but we never made him watch us run in a circle or competitively toss a Frisbee.
When my sports career was tragically ended due to me being “bad” at “all” “sports”, I was frankly worried about what he was going to do with the extra time on his hands. For his sake I just kept going to school so he could keep coming to my graduations. I’m shocked he never showed up to one of my court hearings.
The trick, with grandpa, is that we never questioned that he wouldn’t show up, no matter how small the role or bad the team or long the ceremony (and did I mention that Amy Klobuchar gave the commencement address at my law school graduation?) He would show up and heap us with praises and buy us a sundae (with or without tomatoes) for the simple reason that we were, individually and collectively, his favorite people on earth.
Now, there is some contention between our generation as to who was actually grandpa’s favorite.
Tears have been shed. Punches have been thrown.
So earlier this week I asked them all to make their best case, to allow us to determine once and for all who was grandpa’s most favored grandchild, prized above all others, named first in the will, etc. etc.
It’s a stiff competition, and I’ve yet to meet a grandchild who hasn’t made a claim to victory. Several contenders submitted written proof, in the form of book dedications, letters or birthday cards, which my handwriting expert is still analyzing the results, but I think we can dismiss such evidence by asking ourselves, who among us doesn’t have a copy of Writing for Wally signed, “to my very favorite grandchild”?
There were several entries related to food, but so far as I know none of my cousins invented the root beer float, so I have to look upon these accounts with suspicion.
Grandpa challenged a disturbing but unsurprising amount of us to physical combat, particularly the athletes in the family, because, as one grandson put it, “game recognized game”. Another faction pointed to his praise of various “talents”, including music, theater, showtunes. People who live far away claim absence makes the heart grow fonder, while others point to the frequency of their visits or chats. Meg, in a shameless bid to outpace the field, had his name tattooed on her person. I have to admit that grandpa’s late in life discovery of and delight in the Gilmore Girls momentarily tipped the odds in favor of Molly McCollow, particularly after he was seen wearing a Gilmore Girls themed sweatshirt on Christmas, but really, as the answers came in, there wasn’t a dud among them.
[Read from cards]:
“I know I’m Grandpa’s favorite because in sixth grade he helped me write a paper about Navy Seals. I got a D.”
“We were his favorites because we were the fake grandkids.”
“He never told me I was his favorite, but he was always honest, kind and fair to me.”
“I know I’m grandpa’s favorite because I’m a power ranger.”
“I know I’m Grandpa’s favorite because every time I showed up he said, now it’s going to be a great day!”
“I know I’m Grandpa’s favorite because I am a writer just like him.”
This one just says “Cancer.”
At the end of the day, the evidence is inconclusive, and there is no way to know who may have ranked first as grandpa’s true favorite. You just knew, when you looked up to the bleachers and there he was, or when you sat down next to him and he told you a joke, or when you walked through the door and saw his smile, every single time, that he was yours.
God blessed Grandpa with a lot of time. He had 93 years, packed with adventure and laughter, 64 years married to the love if his life, and at least 35 with his favorite grandchild. And that may have been enough for him, but it wasn’t enough for me, and I don’t think five more years or ten more years would have been enough for me either, because it’s already a little bit worse to live in a world where I can’t make grandpa laugh so hard he passes out.
I can only hope that someday years from now I might make it to heaven, and I can sit down at a table with him and Sam Morrison and a deck of cards. I just hope he can convince the commissioner to let me play on credit.