Poppa

What can i possibly say? When i was little my poppa was retired and he would come to my house, pick my brother and i up and take us to McDonald's ... just because. He lived 40 minutes away, never called first, but he knew my mother did not have a car and was stuck in the house with us. He would order a "seniors" coffee ... back then it was like 57cents ... he never ate any of the food there. He used to take my brother and i to "The Great Escape" ... for all you non-upstaters, it was the smallest spot of ground ever to be called an amusement park (except maybe Hoffman's playland) even if now it is a six-flags park. He never rode the rides, just watched us.
When we spent the weekend there he would take us to the library and let us take out whatever we wanted, then on to the movie store to rent whatever we wanted ... he taught me to hit a golf ball (which is not like riding a bike i recently learned), he taught me to shoot, to play ping pong, how to think about women ... how to be a gentleman. He used to tell us that if we woke him up at the "crack of dawn" we'd be in trouble ... the following morning we would inadvertently wake him at some predawn hour and not get in trouble. He was big and strong and clever and funny and he loved us.
In his younger years he was the epitome of the self made man, he worked his way to being a battalion chief in the NY FD, he retired as a general from the Army National Guard, he sent 5 children to college and went from the brink as a young man in the depression to being quite comfortable as a young retiree.
He and my father would argue, and it delighted me. My father would volunteer on a home improvement project or to fix up the antique apartment he (my poppa) bought as a rental property ... this is my father's arena, home repairs, woodwork etc ... and the older could not stand the idea of the younger knowing more and being right. At the end of the day he invited my father because he needed the help and knew that his oldest son was the man for the job, but he had something in him that demanded that he be in charge. It was delightful to watch, even if it seemed to frustrate them both to no end.
The last time i saw him he did not know who i was, eight months earlier he knew me on the phone but could not remember where i lived, a month ago he knew no one, last week he stopped eating. He is gone now, and i knew it was coming ... all the same i wept like a baby tonight. I wept for not calling him back after the call where he didn't know where i lived, i wept for leaving so quickly when he did not know me last summer, i wept that my children will never know the man i knew, that my wife won't ... he was weak even when she met him (but still sharp). The last few years it's as if i have been looking through a doorway at him, "He's there ... it's OK." But never going in the room, and now the door is closed. I wept because i will miss my poppa forever and today is the first day of my life that he has not been there, i wept because we lost a great man who loved his country and made sacrifices to provide for his children and his country. I wept because i loved my poppa and i knew he loved me every moment he was alive, i felt it every time i saw him, i miss you already Pop and i love you!