Dear Gaffer:

Dear Gaffer:

I admire you so. You are quite likely the most intelligent person I have ever met. What's more, you were an actor, not by profession but by avocation. I firmly believed most of the time I was young that you were a leprechaun. Honestly, it is still almost as believable as electrical engineer.

Although I know you always found it a challenge to communicate with children, I believe you managed it better with me than with your daughters. Certainly I have always enjoyed listening to you and learning from you. My interest in Gilbert & Sullivan comes from you, through my mother, and it was always your quotes that led me to ask about it.

On reflection, I think it was you who taught me to love fantasy more than my father. It was you who gave me the entire Oz series, four books a year. Both my father and I have benefitted from your interest in fantasy and science fiction. You brought several excellent authors to our attention. I regret that it is too late to introduce you to some of the authors I have started Daddy reading.

Watching your deterioration has been deeply painful for me on several fronts. Not only is it always difficult to see in someone you love, but I think perhaps your form of dementia is what I fear the most for myself. I am not brave enough. The Alzheimers patient often doesn't realize what happens to them, and often their bodies are not affected. You first became trapped in a body which wouldn't respond. Now, with the body left most often in a nursing unit with a bunch of vegetables, your mind lacks the stimulation to fight it. You know what is happening to you. They say you suffer from severe depression. I don't wonder at that. I would be depressed too, to know I was infirm of body and gradually growing infirm of mind. Although it doesn't always show, I know you are still there. My mother says you are on a new anti-depressant which has brought you back to yourself somewhat, that you are doing crossword puzzles and initiating conversations again. I hope so, truly, and I hope it can maintain you there for a while. I have missed you.

Dear Pop-Pop:

Dear Pop-Pop:

You brought me nearer the past. As my oldest grandparent, you had a harder time than the others at getting down on the floor to play, but it didn't stop you. Nothing ever really stopped you, or any of your generation. My generation is the instant gratification generation, wanting it now or not at all. Yours wanted it, and plugged away until you got it, no matter how long that took or how hard it was.

You didn't really understand my sense of humor. Daddy tells me that when he was growing up, you didn't understand his, or his mother's, either. You didn't understand a lot of what motivated me, the goals I had, or the goals I couldn't find. I was fifteen in 1992 and 1993. You were fifteen in 1926. The world has changed a lot since then.

No matter what you understood, though, you loved me enough to trust that whatever I thought, whatever I wanted, was important enough to fight for. You loved all of your grandchildren that deeply, and supported us all in any way you could. You went to every Little League game and dance recital you could. I'm sure you wanted to be at my high school plays and band concerts, and were only stopped by the distance.

I was lucky enough to have you at my high school graduation. None of the others had that; by Michael's graduation the following year, you were bedridden and we all knew it was only a matter of time, and you died only a few weeks later. In fact, all four of my grandparents were at my graduation, and three years later, my brother had only me and our parents. Still, I believe that your love has been with all of us, through high school graduations, and college graduations. When and if I get married, I am sure I will feel the force of your love with me on that day.

I strive, each day, to love my family and my friends with the strength and absolute conviction you always displayed.