I was lucky enough to grow up with two grandfathers. Poppa Ted, who recently passed this fall, and my Poppa Ray.
While each one was special in my heart, they each had their own little parts of it to themselves.

My Poppa Ray was always the guy in the basement, organizing his jars of nuts and bolts, or the one who set up the super8 projector and showed us hours and hours of slides. Later in his life, dementia set in, right about the time this specialty was also on my career path as a nurse. He turned into a very charming and darling old man… delightful in his forgetfulness.

I would call him at home once a week, while my Grandma left him to work.
“Hi Poppa, it’s Tracie Bea from Minnesota!”
And each and every time he would say “Ohhh!! Tracie Bea!!! How are you?” like we were the best of friends.
Even in the late stages of his disease, my greeting still seemed to connect the dots for us.

From pancakes on the 4th to Gnomes in the yard… to stacking newspapers with him on the coffee table… we had some good times.

One of my silliest and funniest moments was when I was having breakfast with him. He had gotten to the stage of his disease where he still had the words, but often they were the wrongs one, got stuck on the way out, or he simply invented one to suit his needs. Toothbrushes became “that scratchy thing” and a drink request might have gotten shortened to “you know, that cold thing” etc.

That morning, at breakfast, he had 4 boxes of cereal in front of him. He studied them for a long time, and my Gram giggled in passing, explaining “I just leave him in the cereal aisle while I shop, he takes forever to pick out a box. haha. “

“Hey Poppa,” I asked. “Why did you pick out that cereal?”

He sat for a minute, then looked at me.
“I like my cereal a little bit chompy.”

I was not sure what he meant at that moment, but we went on to enjoy our breakfast.
We’re sitting there, sipping on coffee and talking about the weather.

I stopped for a second, and realized what I was hearing; it was Poppa Ray… mouth full of cereal, carefully selected from his choices…
some super crispy crunchy granola noisy cluster thing.
::::Chomp Chomp Chomp::::

Yup. Chompy.

After a long battle with Alzheimer’s, my grandfather passed away today,
with his wife and family all around him.
I’ll miss you Poppa.
Love,
Tracie Bea from Minnesota