I’ve been absent recently as I come to terms with something we all know haunts our steps and lurks around the corners of our lives. Yet looking it in the eyes is something even the staunchest realist might fail at when faced with its existence. I wish I were talking about taxes.

Some of my earliest memories include my grandmother Rose, a woman who, for the better part of my life time has been known to everyone as Gaga, if only because I couldn’t master the word grandmother as a wee lad. And for those of you who think that moniker a tough road to hoe for almost 40 years, well you haven’t seen her medical file. I do not exaggerate when I say they need a rolling cart and two orderlies to wheel the thing in prior to any of the medical procedures she’s had to endure over the last 20 years.

I will be flying “home” to California to see her, and in all probability say good-bye. The very thought of this trip and the reason for it, brings up a good many of those memories as well as thoughts of her life prior to me joining it and saddling her with a name, that for me, is synonymous with eternal and unconditional love. I was once told she’d walk through fire for me, and every time I set out to test that theory, she proved it in the positive.

As she lies in a hospital bed, and most likely hoping to join the man she loved as opposed to going home again, and alone, I look at this photo of the two of them, so long ago, with so much of their lives ahead of them. My dad recently sent me this picture. It arrived a day before the news that Gaga was dying. He didn’t know the history of the picture other than what is told by the image itself. More than likely my grandfather is on leave of some kind prior to his shipping out for the Philippines and the great war. I think it’s Chicago, as that’s where they were living, and the photographer is totally unknown.

What is known is that my grandfather would return home after the war as a Colonel to meet his 2 year old son, and some 16 years later, they’d move to Newport Beach, dad would meet mom, have me and I’d affix the name of Gaga on the woman who’d buy me my very first camera. A Minolta Pocket Auotpak 70. I still have it, and while I still have her, I’ll be on my way to tell her how much I love her.

And during this time of year, maybe we should all reach out to those whom we still have and do the same.

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