Everything about my Grapea can be summarized by
the fact that he let me (and his 4 other grandkids) call him Grapea, which was
my botched pronunciation of “Grandpa,” and didn’t even complain when it was
eventually shortened to “Grape.” My Grapea was my hero. He spent weeks at
hunting camp every fall, crafted flawless appetizer platters, fought in the Bay
of Pigs, was the most accomplished sewer I’ve ever met, and had long, intricate
scavenger hunts ready for me for me every Sunday after Mass. He was the most
laidback, carefree, and fun-loving Republican I’ve ever met. My sophomore year
of high school, my mom, uncle, and Mimi organized a get-together for his 70th
birthday, and we all flew up to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the whitest town in
America. We went out to dinner, went to the spa, took pictures with old boats,
and had that talk. My seven-foot
tall, unbeatable, deer-hunting grandpa was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Every summer, that entire side of my family went
on a beach trip. Grapea would book the house that would sleep 11 people months
in advance and craft a menu that featured breakfast, lunch, snacks, dinner, and
(his favorite) dessert for seven nights. The summer I turned 12, I was deemed
organized enough to be his successor, and I took over the menu writing and
invariably assigned dessert to Mimi and Grapea every night. True to form,
Grapea scouted out a new ice cream place (not too hard in New England summer,
the land of endless ice cream) for every night. Sometimes, my sister, cousin,
and I ended up with a late night visitor who carried a gallon of ice cream he
had hidden from the rest of the family and four spoons, and we would talk for
hours. The year after he was diagnosed, we waited up for our Grapea and our
gallon, but it never came: he had gone to sleep at 7 pm after fighting off
sleep for hours. The prostate cancer had advanced to his pancreas and was
raging through his body.
When I was 8 or 9, I was eating Teddy Grahams
and Grapea grabbed some but promptly spit them out and announced that I had
terrible taste because those were the grossest things he’d ever eaten. I would
jokingly leave packages of Teddy Grahams around the house for him to find, and
every Christmas since then, we both sent each other a box of Teddy Grahams
(although his box stayed in the cupboard of their house in Andover until my
family visited them and he shuddered as I ate them.) My real present was always
beautifully wrapped and labelled in my Mimi’s flawless cursive, and his box,
which he felt the need to wrap with seven layers of duct tape and address in
mile-high stick letters, arrived alongside it, sometimes with “poison” or
“hazardous materials” stickers on it, just to freak out the Post Office.
This past Christmas was the first year I didn’t
eat Teddy Grahams.
The cancer had become systemic, and Grapea was
been living in a hospice and unable to recognize his family, who had been
holding vigil at his bedside.
Grapea was the most supportive, reasonable
person I know. When my mom would yell at me for skipping Chemistry, he
rationally asked if I was doing the work anyway, and she immediately calmed
down. When my grandma would flip out because the younger cousins were being
destructive, he silenced them with one barked order, because when Grapea
yelled, he meant business. When he would take me fishing, he unhooked the tiny
fish I caught to stop me from crying because ‘it was a baby,’ assuring me that
no one would ever eat it, because it was smaller than my fist. I am a lot of
things he wasn’t, and I can feel his silent pride for taking advantage of
opportunities he never had.I Relay because it should have been Grapea crying
with Mimi at my graduation, not my Uncle Mike. I Relay because he shouldn’t have
had to plan his own funeral, counting down the days he had left. I Relay
because after sending me emails with the info and admission stats of
(literally) 100+ colleges within an hour of Andover and taking me on visits of
15 of those, he should have lived to see me make my decision. One year ago
today, my Grapea became a ‘was.’ Cancer sucked the life out of the most
energetic, sensible, L.L. Bean loving, and understanding person I know. He
fought until the last day, and now it’s my turn: I will Relay until my last
day, and hopefully inspire others: It’s time to fight back.
RelayLOVE,
Entertainment Committee
