Bumble Bees and Martinis

So the funeral is on Monday and I am 7,713 miles away…. well this sucks.

Most of us, if not all, have had to deal with a death of a friend or family member and it can be hard. My grandpa was admitted to the hospital a month or so ago and from there everything went downhill. The doctors told us that he only expects the situation to worsen and he gave us a short timeline.

The reality of this shitty situation is that not all of us are lucky enough to have a heads up before death decided to come knock on your door. Over the next month I saw my grandpa more than I normally would in a year. Sometimes it was to go help to have his hair cut, sometime to talk/visit, and others to sneak in some wine for thanksgiving as a treat. He would have preferred what he likes to call a “martini”. I never understood that about him. He always loved drinking his “martinis” and I asked one day how can he call it a martini when it’s just neat vodka? His reply, “I put it in a shaker to cool it down, poor it into a martini glass and drop in an olive; so it’s a martini”.

Over his last few years he started an autobiography and he never failed to lean over and whisper in my ear, “I’m leaving all of the fun party days out. You know, so the girls don’t get upset”. I could not help but laugh every time he said this.

It does not matter if he was in his 20’s, mid-life, or in his early 90’s he was still the same person. Maybe a little wiser, but still the same man who loved to have a good time and tell jokes and stories. There was one poem he loved to tell and it went like this.

This is the story of the bee

Whose sex is very hard to see

You cannot tell the he from the she

But she can tell, and so can he

The little bee is never still

She has no time to take the pill

And that is why, in times like these

There are so many sons of bees.

I enjoyed the time we were able to spend together towards the end but it made me realize how important time can be with one another and I wanted to express this to others.

Take the time to call your friends and family more than you do now. Give them a call to meet up for dinner or lunch regularly and not only at the typical holidays and birthdays but because it Wednesday and why not? Not everyone will be so lucky to say goodbye and tell someone how much they love them and how much they mean to them. Don’t hold back and live life with no regrets.

Here’s to you grandpa, and every martini or “shot of vodka” I drink, will remind me of you; along with the many other memories I have.