Let me back up. When I was born my folks had very little money. My dad had just finished college and was in the Guard, my mom walked across the stage for Nursing School graduation with me - a few months before I was born. They tell me we lived in a little home in Silver Spring after I was born.
And at all times - according to the tale - they leaned on my mom's parents who lived in Rockville, Anne and Tom Brutscher.
I know we lived in their house for a period of time while our home was being built in far-off Mt. Airy (where they had pastures and cows and dirt roads). All I can recall is my Grandma taking me to the park, goofing off with my uncle (also named Tom), and loving all the attention.
Anyway, I'll speed it up. We moved to Mt. Airy. My Grandma died of cancer in '76 (I think). All I recall is my mom crying, sobbing really, into the receiver.
After that, we saw my Grandfather less. I think he had to go deal with his grief in his own way. He eventually took up with a lady my mom didn't like, married her and later divorced. Mom refused to let us see him unless his new wife wasn't around - so we didn't see him much at all. Obviously, after the divorce, that changed.
In 1985 I started going to school at St. John's in DC, and one of the bigger reasons my folks sent me there was because his house was right off the Twinbrook Metro stop. I'd get dropped off at the train station by 7 am and go to school, then hop off in the afternoon at his house to wait for my dad to finish working.
It was then that I really got to know my grandfather. He'd been a WW2 veteran, serving in the Coast Guard and was shot in the hip. He'd apparently lied about his age and cheated on the Coast Guard's swimming test in order to get in - back then I guess kids really wanted to join the war effort. Before that, he'd been a football and hockey player for Central Catholic in Pittsburgh (home of, years later, Dan Marino). He was from a family of orphaned boys in Pittsburgh who'd been lucky enough to have been raised by an uncle instead of dropped off at the orphanage like his brothers.
He met my Grandma after the war, settled in DC with a job at the Government Printing Office, and had my mom and uncle. He liked golfing, was active in a local bowling league, and I guess you'd say all in all he enjoyed a quiet unassuming suburban life.
But all of that really doesn't sum him up. He was - to me anyway- a little bigger than life. He'd occupy a room when I was a kid. He was quick with a joke (always inappropriate), and - looking back - I guess was kind of a jerk to people (I think he'd pick fights with people on purpose, he seemed to really enjoy needling people when he found a weak spot) but they'd always appear to laugh it off.
Over time, the first couple years of high school anyway, I guess you'd say we became friends. As my uncle married and started his family, I think my grandfather was lonely. He never married again, and as the years went by he seemed to retreat into alcohol more and more. Sometimes I'd spend the night at his place in Rockville and he'd serve himself wine with breakfast. He was a chain-smoker who always wanted to quit. He was, like any of us, far from perfect. But above all, I think he was still grieving for my Grandma and angry at God, who'd taken her away from him far, far too soon.
I'll forever carry the weight of guilt over pulling away. I was about 15, turning 16, and I started dating gals and "moving on," in the way any teenaged boy will. I saw him less and less. He'd come out to my lacrosse games, or Sunday dinners at our house. But I was more interested in girls and cars and stuff like that.
On December 22, 1987, mom had me call over to his house to let him know our Xmas plans. It rang forever. No answer. I tried back a little later, same thing. The next time I called a different man's voice (Mr. Lee, his neighbor) picked up the phone and told us that we'd better come out there. It was the longest ride I've ever experienced. Mom told me not to go running in, I did anyway.
I knew what death was. Hell, I was 16 -not an imbecile. But I wasn't ready to see my grandfather's body lying in rigor mortis. I haven't been the same since, part of me (my innocence, I'm guessing) died with him.
Given his lifestyle at the time (too much booze, too many years of smoking) a heart attack was not a total shock - but his absence in my life was. Everyone's grandparents pass away - they're old and that's life, right? But like I said I wasn't ready for it. My grades slipped, I acted up in school a little (I cut classes, went to his place and drank my uncle's beer with some guys from high school), and was generally miserable.
I don't recall my folks ever coming to me and talking about it. I think our little family was in shock. My mom's relationship with her brother dissolved into nothingness in various arguments about the status of my grandfather's estate - so I lost my uncle, too.
Time healed it over into a nice scar, that I can still see when I want to. I miss him terribly, and hope that I haven't let him down too much in the years since he passed. We had to say goodbye too soon.
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