Remembering Grandpa Tony, and Reflecting on Death

On the morning of July 2nd, 2020, after waking up to a text from my dad that my mom’s father, my beloved Grandpa Tony, had passed from life on the evening of his 59th anniversary, I began to write down my thoughts. I felt a strange peace at the time; although I was incredibly sorrowful and the tears would come later, I experienced a brief moment of lucidity as I penned—or typed, as it were—my raw reaction to Grandpa’s passing. I desired to articulate my thoughts on death at the time, but after first reflecting extensively on my Grandpa’s life, I found that the sudden inspiration to consider how, in the aftermath of the death of a loved on, I was to carry on, had fled, replaced by emotional exhaustion and the surreal notion that there were so many experiences with my Grandpa yet unshared and so many conversations yet unspoken.

A couple weeks later during a Zoom memorial service, along with each of my siblings, I shared a short reflection on my Grandpa’s life, adapted mostly from that initial journal entry where I’d written down my raw reaction. Here’s what I shared at that memorial service.

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When I first heard that Grandpa Tony had passed away two weeks ago, I’d already come to a sort of peace with it. Jacqueline and I had spoken through the phone to him from our home in Ireland, knowing we would get no discernible response. I had cried a little bit after that, but I knew that I would have to come to terms with the fact that I would probably not make it back to the US in time to see him in person. So when I saw my Dad’s text on the morning of July 2nd, Irish time, instead of immediate grief, the first question I asked myself was, what do I do with his death?

What do I do with death? It’s easy to live this life with a sense of apathy towards the idea of death, but when death looms over someone you deeply love, who was once—and in some ways always will be—an important presence in your life, what do you do with that?

Let me consider his presence.

My Grandpa Tony was a flawed, yet caring, man and an excellent grandfather. My mom had a different relationship with him as his daughter than I did as his grandson; perhaps I’m biased, but I always felt like he was particularly suited to the grandfather role. Grandpa Tony often had a certain youthful vigor, not so much physically, but in his passions for baseball and cribbage and even in the way he got so excited about particular topics when we talked. I remember his traditional greeting every time we drove up to Los Altos to visit Grandpa and Grandma’s house: he would pick me up and bonk his forehead against mine, accentuating the soft collision with the verbal ”bonk!” It always made me laugh. It was like he was telling me, “I may be old, but I’m not too dignified to tell you I love you in a language you’ll understand.” I’m grateful to have had many people in my life who made me feel loved when I was little, but what set my grandpa apart was his certain presence as he loved me. You could always tell when Grandpa was coming down the hall, his slow and heavy gait contrasting so sharply with Grandma’s little patter. He had this big Italian, New Yorker feel about him. He grew up in the Bronx, and he spoke often of the good old days of Yankees baseball, when he saw Joe Dimaggio and Mickey Mantle take the field. To a little kid like me, he was just unlike anyone I’d ever met. The fact that he loved me was and is a really special thing.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention—and wish I had time to share with more detail—how Grandpa’s devoted Catholic faith, his faithfulness to Grandma Joan, his devotion to the Yankees, and his general kindness and hospitality towards me and my family all made an indelible impact on me. Suffice to say that I couldn’t have drawn up a better grandpa for myself if someone gave me all the crayons and paper and time in the world. I’m really thankful for the blessing of having spent the first 25 years of my life with Grandpa Tony, even if the last one was from afar.

So what do I do with Grandpa Tony’s death? I’ll leave the rest of my grappling with that question for another time, but the first thing I can do is consider our relationship and pray this: “Thank you, God, for giving me such an amazing grandfather.” Thank you.

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And I still echo that prayer. Although it’s interesting, isn’t it, how the poignancy of a death fades? I had wanted to further dive into the question of what to do with death after my grandfather’s passing, but the days turned into weeks, the weeks into months, and soon I was dealing with a whole host of new problems. Yes, Grandpa Tony will always be dear to my heart, but it almost seems as though the concerns of life function together to suppress the urgency of the question. What question could be more important? As I’ve heard a good evangelist say, “We’re all part of the ultimate statistic: 10/10 die.” Why isn’t this question more pressing on our minds and our hearts? Why aren’t we frantically searching for the truth of the matter, when our lives and the lives of any of our loved ones could be snatched away tomorrow? Why, when tomorrow is not guaranteed, are we worrying so much about this and that, fretting about our plans for tomorrow, when tomorrow may never come?

I think I know why—and maybe you can relate. It’s because I like the distraction. Shortly after my grandpa’s death, my wife and I had to navigate airport terminals and airplanes during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, as we flew home for Grandpa’s very small, in-person memorial service. Then we had to deal with quarantining, learning how to respect our friends’ and families’ boundaries regarding in-person meetups while scheduling strangely distanced get-togethers. Finishing up my thesis on biodegradable magnesium was a doozy, and I actually had to pull a few all-nighters to get it finished a few days after the late-August deadline. Soon, Jacqueline and I were planning our return to Ireland, launching into a new domain of questions and unknowns. Where would I get a job? Would Jacqueline get PhD funding? Would we be able to stay in Ireland after this difficult year, or would we have to change course? Would spending further months in a tiny house without much sun wear on us, and would we be able to handle the resulting conflict with love and kindness towards each other rather than anger and selfishness?

All these questions, though important and each worthy of its own blog post, quickly distracted me from the original question I’d briefly pondered: how do I respond to death? The convenient thing about these relatively smaller problems is that they are easier to handle. I can feel like I somehow have control over the reigns of my life, even though, from a more cogent perspective, I am careening towards the edge of a cliff called eternity, as much as every other person who has ever and will ever live.

It didn’t take long, however, before we were jolted back to this reality. Keeping an eye on the rolling statistics tracking deaths from coronavirus doesn’t really do the urgency of our human situation justice, but the reality of death hit home again when we again stood at the bedside (figuratively) of another two dear loved ones who passed, one from the coronavirus, and another from a sudden stroke. In these times, apparently, complacency seemed sillier and sillier. Surely a heart that experiences great stress at the uncertainty of the present moment while simultaneously ignoring the ever-present certainty of death is “deceitful above all things, and desperately sick” (Jer. 17:9).

The author of Hebrews, a book in the New Testament, writes that “it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment” (Heb. 9:27). Paul writes in his letter to the Romans that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). I could ruminate for a long time on what to do with the recent death of Grandpa Tony, and our other loved ones, but first of all, I must confess that I rarely think clearly about this. So often my thoughts are consumed with the busyness of today and the expectations for tomorrow that I don’t stop to ponder that one day I will die, and the Word of God says that I will be judged “according to my works” (Rom. 2:6).

James, the brother of Jesus, derides the mindset of those “who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit,’” even though they “do not know what tomorrow will bring.” He then asks, “What is your life?” and immediately answers his own question: “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (Jam. 4:13-14).

To be honest, I don’t want to die. And I don’t want my loved ones to die either. But sure as hell, death is coming for all of us. I often have the complacent mindset only appropriate to one who will never die, as if my current health and youthfulness is indicative of an eternal body rather than the brief flourishing of “a flower of the field, for the wind passes over it, and it is gone” (Ps. 103:15-16).

What did I think about when I first heard the news of my grandpa’s passing? It was first, instead of answering my own philosophical question about death, reflection on how very thankful I am for him. How much I love him. How he so often made me feel loved and how I felt so sad not to have one more “bonk” or one more conversation about his Yankees and their World Series chances. It was his eternal qualities that impacted me so much, the fact that a part of him will always be in my heart. But what is the value of that special place for him in a heart that will also meet the same fate one day? Does it fall on me to pass down these same eternal joys by loving my own grandson one day? Is that all there is? I cannot help but consider that, the greatest gift my grandfather has given me is a sampling of the eternal joy I was made for, for, as CS Lewis writes, “if I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world” (Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis).

So is there no greater pursuit than the call to love other people in my life with an ever-present awareness of my coming demise? I think not. There exists a tension between the fact that I anticipate an end to this life and the reality that I am made for something more. The great gift of a loving grandfather, then, doesn’t just richly supply love for me when he is alive, but it points to the sheer inadequacy of all temporal loves to satisfy the hunger of my soul. It points to the eternal, never-ending love that I crave, that I have always craved ever since I was a little kid driving up with my parents to play cribbage with my grandpa, snack on Haagen-Daaz bars, swim in their pool in the bright Los Altos sun, and enjoy the presence of my beloved grandparents while totally complacent to the ever-looming reality of death. For a time, my grandpa satisfied that love in a unique way. He made me feel special. And I still have people who supply that love. I have a loving wife, and two wonderful families, not to mention extended families and friends with whom I would love to retain existing and build stronger relationships. But on that day when I too reach that appointed time, when I come to stand alone before my Creator, will I be ashamed of my complacency, of all the little worries that consumed my heart and distracted me from the reality of my terrifyingly momentary life? Will you?

So what is to be done with death? I suppose, in some strange way, the clarity that comes with death is a monumental gift. We get to see, for a glimmer of a moment, with a sobriety to honestly confront our eternal fate. And I suppose, after thanking God for the gift of a loving grandfather, I might resolve that I would never forget to in turn love others and live my life to the fullest, never wasting a single day.

But something profound is missing from that resolve. Because I will forget. The days turn into weeks and months and years. “I am of the flesh, sold under sin” (Rom. 7:14). And there will come a day—and indeed, there have already been many such days since my grandpa’s passing—when I will grow stressed and angry and selfish, when I am tempted to lie or harm someone else for my own gain. There will be days when I will experience worldly guilt and try to manipulate others to relieve me of my pain. There will be days when I hate someone without cause, when I lust, when I blaspheme the God who gave me life, finding myself worshiping the (little g) gods of self-acceptance, popularity, comfort, and material gain. And then, when I stand before my God, I will have nothing to say for my complacency.

Unless, this eternal, divine being who formed me offers redemption. Unless, though I have transgressed His eternally good character as found in His Law, there is a way to be reconciled to him.

I have discovered that there is a real offer of redemption to anyone who would receive it. So in the light of Grandpa Tony’s death, I offer my reflection on that difficult question: what do we do with death? It’s simply the most important thing we can ever do: “Repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15).

What is the Gospel? The Gospel is this: “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures… he was buried… he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and… he appeared to [his disciples]” (1 Cor. 15:3-5) before ascending into heaven, where he is currently on the throne. In other words, Jesus paid the debt I owed for my sin, my foolish complacency in the light of death, and now I am freed to live for him, both in this life and in the life to come. There is no better way to live, because I now walk toward death not as one without hope, but believing that God will “wipe away every tear from [my] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).

So even several months after Grandpa Tony’s passing, I can take heart that these tears freshly forming in my eyes at the thought of not experiencing his love again in this life will “turn into joy” (John 16:20). All along, the love I cherished from him was on loan from God, and I anticipate a day when that temporal love I felt often during the first 25 years of my life will be revealed as the eternal love of the very one who redeemed me and called me by name.