Plaidophile

The last two years or so have been pretty stressful, especially in the time since March. But my grandpa made it to a bit past 99, and he was greatly loved by everyone who knew him. The service was beautiful and simple. Many family members came (quite a few more couldn't come but they'd just been here for his birthday party a couple weeks ago, which was more of a "going away" party than anything else), and we shared so many cherished memories of him. Even a few of his patients came, from back when he was an eye doctor. They had kept in touch with him over the years, and they remembered him quite fondly.

I learned a lot about him that I didn't know before. He became an ophthalmologist because he'd wanted to become an optical engineer, but all the schools had quotas on the number of Jews they could accept, so he figured that being a doctor would be the next best thing, and after he got back from World War II (where he was an Army medic on several battlefronts, including the Battle of the Bulge), he took on a post-graduate degree in ophthalmology (which was also difficult to get into, because of the same blatant and not-legally-prevented discrimination).

There's quite a bit that I did know already, too, and which was only reinforced. He loved his family and had a positive effect on everyone around him. His philosophy was that the best way to have good memories of things was to only remember the good things. He was very giving and generous and gracious and tried his hardest to never have anything bad to say about people. He loved learning and science and never wanted to stop growing, and really he kept on learning about science and technology until the end. He was an avid consumer of literature and always kept up-to-date with computing stuff (even if it did infuriate him sometimes), and even when his kidneys failed a few years ago, he didn't treat it as a disability or as a sign of weakness but as a science experiment.

He was always collecting things. A good chunk of this past week was spent trying to decide which things of his people would want, and what we could just get rid of. There was no shortage of mementos, both of him and of my grandmother (who died in 1989; I'd only gotten a brief chance to know her, but everything I've learned about her makes me wish I'd gotten more time with her). His basement is a testament to his never-ending tinkering; there were at least three lifetimes' worth of unfinished projects down there, and some amazing old equipment, including an old hearing tester (with Bakelite casing!), numerous musical instruments he was working on rebuilding, quite a lot of craft projects, and some back-and-forth correspondence with the manufacturers of a vinyl record cutter he was experimenting with and trying to optimize. I actually found one of his old homemade records, a recording of him, my grandma, and my aunt (year unknown, but she was probably 5); I've been tasked with trying to recover the audio, a project I greatly look forward to.

After all this, I feel closer to him and my grandmother than I ever have before, and even more importantly, I feel closer to my living relatives than ever as well. I am positive that this would make him very happy.