A legacy of crabs...

My grandfather passed away this morning at about 4:30 am, about nine months after they discovered polyps in his colon. Liver cancer.

I have thought often today, and in the monhts and years before, about this man. I would not describe him as a happy man. He's not a man who embraced you physically or emotionally. Quick qith wit, his humor always had a biting edge. I've even, at time, resented this man for not trying harder to show his love for my father and others around him, but, that's our legacy. Each generation has this crabbiness, and each of us works to be a better person. He was no exception.

My grandfather's mother died when I was in high school. This is the woman who did not talk to my father for two years because his hair was too long. All she ever wanted, and received, for christmas was a carton of menthol cigarettes. Her last words on this earth were, "you're breath stinks and you ain't got no goddamn manners." I know where my grandfather ("Pop") got it from. It's lessened in each generation, but I've got it too. Pop may have realized it later in life, before the move to Florida, because he DID loosen up. He did smile a little easier, and he did show appreciation. He took us down to his house boat on the Chesapeake Bay to go crabbing, and we'd have enourmous crab feasts afterwards (with the crabs we bought on the way home). I remember the smell of those cigar boxes he'd give me to collect butterflies with as well as the garden he took so much pride in. He had a right to take pride as he harvested full sized and delicious vegetables from a ten by thirty patch on the back side of their baltimore city brownstone. It seems that an above ground pool once sat on that spot.

Pop took me fishing, taught me the power of silence and the importance of family. I will miss him. Orlando, here I come.