In-Laws: So Much More Than In Law

Another gray and rainy day.

Last week we got together and with Grandpa and went over to the Crawdad Shack and got him and Oyster Po'Boy.  On Wednesday he was admitted into the hospital.  After a minor surgery, he was out on Friday.  Today, we went over to see him again.  He was doing well.

Here are some old picture of him when he used to come out to the soccer fields to watch the boys play when they were little.

Granny passed away in early January.

She meant so much to all of us.  She was the one I could always call at any time day or night when the boys were small.  When my oldest was in the hospital so much--because of leukemia we'd have to report to the emergency room for the slightest touch of fever and then sometimes we'd have to stay overnight, or sometimes they might have to do unexpected tests that lasted all afternoon--I would have to call Granny.  She would come right over to the hospital and pick up my youngest, who was a toddler then and keep him until life normalized again. 

She'd take my oldest boy to the zoo and spend hours in just the reptile house.  She'd let him pour beans all over the floor in her living room and drive his little dump trucks and excavators through them and dig and load.

The boys enjoyed going over to their grandparents' house and spending the night and watching TV, sewing with the sewing machine, and making things to eat.  They also like to shoot grandpa's b-b gun in the backyard.

Here are some funny pictures of that:

Granny was 81 years old when she passed.  Grandpa is 84.  

Granny used to come to visit us in Italy every May and I would always look forward to it, wondering if April's rains would ever subside.  She was there when my oldest was born.  She arrived the day before he did!

They both came to Turkey.  Grandpa liked it there especially.  He and I are both spoiled since the fresh squid we ate right there right off a fisherman's boat as it pulled into the harbor.  No squid will ever be as good as that again!  I'll never forget the night Granny drank too much raki and beat a Turkish man in backgammon! 

The first time I met Granny she gave me the biggest hug of my life right outside of the hospital where she would lose her son twenty years later, where Grandpa hugged me in the wee hours of that fatal Sunday morning, saying, "It wasn't a matter of if, it was just when."

It's funny how life circles along, pulls us along with all of those we are connected to.