Long day...

Today was the burial of my good friends: mother in law and my other good friend her daughters grand mother. The younger of the two was with her grandma when she died. This was super hard for her, she had never dealt with death up unto this point. At the same point her dad was in the hospital with an unknown ailment, and her sister gave birth to a baby boy less then a week from there grandmothers death. My friend is just 17, she's like my own little sister. It was so hard seeing her devastation, sadness, and anxiety bubbling out of her. The funeral itself had me emotional. I've got an overactive empathy gene or something. I felt hers and her sisters sadness just fill me up. I'm not a crier, but i did cry. In the midst of the service, as i was trying to suck back my tears, I started thinking of my own grandfather. His was the last one I'd been too, nearly five years ago now. I thought how lucky I was to be as comfortable with death as i was. I was with him when he died. He got ill very suddenly while away on vacation. The hospital had revived him, not knowing his wishes to the contrary. When mom and i got to him, he was lucid. He wrote two notes to us. the first for ice, which the nurses wouldn't let him have (the ventilator's tube no like ice) But they brought us these tiny sponges on sticks, the were soaked with water. He new he was dying. With out saying a word he through a fit that the nurse gave him these damn sponges on sticks (so did I). The second note was about one of his horses. Queenie's second foal Piney Princess. She was, at the time in rehab for a complex leg surgery. He wanted to know how she was. mom and i told him, but he wanted to know how she was right NOW. He demanded Mom to call and see. She pretended to do so and excused her self, lol, to the waiting room to use the phone. Queenie had just had her 5Th baby 4 days earlier. Fearing he would never get to see the baby, I woke tony up in the middle of the night as i was getting rushed to the airport, and made him print the best of the pictures we'd taken of him. I remember showing him the picture, and tears running down his eyes. He had wanted so badly to avoid this entire scenario. lying in pain, waiting to die, it took several days for the legal paperwork from NJ to reach Florida. He suffered. I hated the doctors for reviving him, and loved them for the same reason. My mom and I were lucky enough to be with him as left this plain of existence.
The funeral today brought all these thoughts rushing back. The pain in my friends and there families filled my being, and i ached for them. My friends sister said something at the funeral service about her grandmother. "She wasn't just my grandmother, she was my mother, and my best friend." This encapsulated the things i wished i had the courage to say at pops funeral. He was the only man that was always honest with me, really cared what i had to say, and never let me down. He taught me songs from the 40's, how to read the racing form, to respect everyone, to learn as much about anything and everything as i could, to love horses, to never fear my own opinions or expressing them, to be kind to everyone, but especially to those down on there luck, that working as hard as you could towards your goal was not a choice but a mandate, not to run over roosters with his car, to trust my gut, to never let a man or anyone else control me, to live everyday from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep-wasting not a second of it, to enjoy your life, and most importantly, If credit card companies are dumb enough to give an 83 year old man 200,000 in credit, don't name an executor to your estate, and have fun.

Since I've gotten in to my grandfather, here is a short bio for him.
His father and grandparents immigrated to the US, Jews, from Odessa Russia. His mother was German and English, 2ND or 3rd generation here, and a Lutheran. His parents were not good to him. They had a vacation house in Browns Mills, and they'd spend weeks in the summer there. When my grandfather was five, they wanted to go into the city for a show. They tied him to a tree on mirror lake, with a fishing pole, and instructed the shopkeeper to keep an eye on him. They left him for the entire day this way, on many occasions. After his sister was born, all these niceties were gone, and he was completely ignored. A good student, he planned for college, but was drafted for WWII instead. He traveled through Europe, but spent most of his time in northern Africa. He recalled many times being promoted to Sgt., and on the same week finding case of wine in a burned out building, he and his buddies enjoyed that. But, unfortunately for pop, he awoke a few days later, with no clue where he was. Between this and the hash in north Africa, he had an interesting tour. he liked to say he was the only one to enter the war a private and leave the war a Private. he was engaged to Marie when he left for war, but when he came back he fell hard for my granny. Not even talking to Marie, at least not for another 60 years. Granny had 2 boys from a previous marriage. a year or so after they were married, they had my mom. During her childhood he worked any job he could find, most of the time 3 jobs, bus sometimes just two. Granny worked as well, though part time. He was a mail man for 30 years, and then began selling real estate in the late60's. He was president of the Pemberton Township school board in 1971, A member of the Browns Mills lions club for 60 yrs, was very active in the democratic party, as was granny, in the 60's-80's, a longtime member of the ACLU. He contributed to: Southern Poverty law center, the sierra club, the democratic party, Deborah hospital, American heart assoc., and many others on top of his work with the lions. In the 70's he started with the race horses (real estate was good). His father had he had owned some in the 50's, that's when his main source of income was making book. After he started up with the horses, he continued in the racing industry until his death. The only person I've ever known that could consistently pick the trifacta's. In the mid 90's he found his original fiance' Marie, and after a few months of pleading with her she agreed to see him. They were like teenagers all over again and were inseparable until her death in 2000. He's my hero, i can only hope to live my life as well and as fully as he did.

It's indeed amazing how much impact, and how much of me is because of his influence