1916-2004

Paul -

I never could screw up the courage to call you "Grandad" to your face, and I'm sorry about that.  I knew that you wouldn't've minded.  We never really got the chance to talk much, you and I - by the time I entered the picture, you were returning to your mother tongue and I couldn't follow down that path with you.  But I could just catch glimpses of the man that you were, and see you reflected in the man that I love.   

What can one say about a man whose prime of life lasted fifty years?  You were astounding in every way, a legend to everyone but yourself.  Even when you were ill, after they took your stomach the first time and you mourned because you were getting smaller, one could tell how incredibly strong you once were.  You worried at how weak your body had become, but you still could hold yourself with the baring of a man who made his living shaping steel with the strength of his hands, who could lift more than his body weight well into his seventies. 

It was you who gave my husband his love of cars, who saved discarded keys for him and encouraged him to build and rebuild.  Forty years ago, you taught your son, who in turn passed his skills on to his own - someday your lessons will filter down to our children too, and our children will learn how hardworking and full of life their great-grandfather was.  Oh Grandad, you will never be forgotten whenever anyone looks at your grandson.

Once, you told me stories about working for a bakery delivering bread when you were fourteen years old.  You'd stay up all night, you said, taking your girlfriends to the dancehall, three or four at a time, as many as you could afford.  You'd dance the night away and then return to work at dawn, to pay for your dancing the next night.  Even then, you were a true ladies' man - oh your ladies! It was nearly impossible for an outsider to keep track of your "friend-sheep," you who could steal the sweethearts of men twenty years your junior.  You were still going to Cuba and Florida for holidays when other men your age were creeping into recliners to doze their days away.  Not you.  Other men hoarded samples of Viagra, but you had to hide your passport from curious lady-friends who'd claim to be disinterested in men over eighty.  Two summers ago, at the ripe age of 86, you hit on a 24-year old, saying, "Sweetheart, if I were only fifteen years younger, I would take you dancing."   

Doubtless, wherever you are, you are dancing still.

Grandad, I just wanted to tell you that you will never be forgotten, and I wanted to say thank you.

Thank you for grabbing your family and leaving your country to come to this one, saving the name that my children will carry.  Because you survived, you made my family possible.

Thank you for everything.  Köszönöm szépen.
Peace be with you always.