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The following is written by my wife, Dina. Our hearts are with her and her family in this time of great sadness…
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There is a picture in my grandparents house of the two of them. My grandma is smiling beautifully and my grandpa, who is looking very handsome, is not smiling at all. He is looking straight into the camera with emotionless, steel-blue eyes. That is how he presented himself, as one not to be trifled with, but he showed me who he really was.
He was a man of few words and when he spoke you would listen. He always joked with me and playfully picked on my grandma, which seemed like our own inside-joke. I remember sitting on his bed watching TV with him throughout my childhood. This was one of the many ways we spent our time together. We enjoyed the same shows (or at least he would suffer through my shows with me). Most of the time during our lazy days we would drink root beer floats, and to this day when I have one I am reminded of him.
Another memory of my grandpa was him in his garage. He had a bench in there that he would sit on when he was just relaxing with a cold beer. He always seemed like he had a project in there too… or was fixing something around the house. He always seemed to know what he was doing when called on as a handy-man, and no problem was to big; he had a solution. He was smart and he was strong. I knew I could ask him to fix anything and he would unless it was beyond repair.
Many mornings I remember waking up and hear him yell to my grandma,”Café!” (coffee) many times until my grandma would yell back,“Si, Viejo!” (yes, old man)… he would chuckle to himself, very amused at this little ritual of theirs. Then he would get up and go sit at the kitchen table and wait to eat or drink his coffee. He would sit there and tease me and my grandma before getting up to work on another project outside.
My grandfather had a great sense of humor. As I got older I would play along and tease him back. He had many nick names for me… one was pollita (baby bird) because he said I ate like a bird. The one that stuck through out my life was chaparra (shorty), for obvious reasons.
The last time I talked to him on the phone was on Easter Sunday. I asked him if he had a good Easter dinner and he said,”No! Your grandma just gave me frijoles!” then we started to laugh. We talked a little more and then we said our good byes, but not before we said “I love you and miss you!”. Those were the last words we exchanged in this life.
My grandpa was always there to embrace all of the important milestones I’ve hit in my life. He wasn’t one to show emotion easily, but I never doubted his love for me. The thing that has touched me the most about this man is that I am not his biological granddaughter. In fact, he already had a family of his own. He had children and grandchildren and yet he still treated me as one of his own. He is, in my opinion, the prime example of a real man.
This is how I will remember my grandpa.
March 23, 1929- April 16, 2007
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