This week marks the 1 year anniversary of Grampa Marv succumbing to life as we know it…

His mind and body fought hard against Alzheimer’s for many years.  And in the end, when we sat around his bed… telling the fun stories, thanking him for his legacy, enjoying the love of laughter that he instilled in us… he took his last breath. 

And we miss him dearly. 

The pain of missing him is a little less each week… but we will continue to miss him in those random moments when we catch ourselves using the tell-tale phrases he coined in our family… we know what they are and repeat them often.

My favorite memory is eating dessert with him as a kid… and that child-like twinkle would light up his eyes when he ran out of ice cream before he ran out of cake (Gramma always had dessert in the house)… and he would say “Well, it didn’t come out even.”  He would shuffle toward the freezer and come back with a fresh stash of ice cream.  And you could bet that in a few minutes he would again say “Hmm… it didn’t come out even again.”  (This time he ran out of cake before running out of ice cream.)  So he’d go back for more… and the silliness would continue.

In his last months together I reminisced with him about Gramma Ruth.  His memory of her was still so strong and I could tell that he missed her dearly.  She lived in on his mis-firing brain just as if she was still in the room.

March 9th is fast approaching… thankfully we will be together with a good portion of the family.  I’m looking forward to having family close.  His birthday and Christmas were rather difficult.  I can only imagine what the first March 9th will be like…

Thankfully we will be together to reminisce…