Dear Dorothy,
You are seven months old today, and today we got the news that your great-grandpa Meamber had passed away. I’m sorry that you’ll never get to know him, although I’m very grateful that he was able to meet you and hold you before he died.
Grandpa was a doctor. He wasn’t the kind of doctor where that was just his job and he went home every night and left it behind him – he was the kind of doctor where being a doctor wasn’t what he did, it was who he was. He was a very smart young man, who went to medical school intending to do research in an MD/Ph.D. program. Before he could finish his Ph.D., he joined the Navy and went to World War II. When he came back, he decided to be a practicing country doctor instead of a researcher. He delivered babies, set broken bones, and was on hand at every high school football game to treat any injuries as soon as they happened.
When your uncle Jeff and I were little, we used to go to Yreka every summer to go backpacking with Meemom and Poopop and Grandma and Grandpa. Meemom and Poopop and Jeff were all fast hikers, and I used to get left behind with Grandma and Grandpa, who were a little slower. Grandpa told me I was his “pardner,” and we could always hike together. I used to sign his birthday cards “Love, Pardner.” We would fish together, too, and I learned to play bridge on those trips, with Grandma and Grandpa and Poopop.
Grandpa knew all the tricks to feeling better and getting better when you were sick. He taught me how to stop hiccups with a spoonful of sugar, and that you could avert an ear infection by taking a decongestant as soon as your ears started to ache – two tricks that I know I’ll use on you when you get older.
Grandpa was a jogger long before it was popular to jog, and was careful about his health. I remember when he went on a macrobiotic diet for a while, and used to drink miso soup all the time – we all hated it. He was also careful about how much salt he ate. One day at the dinner table, he asked someone to pass him the salt, and everyone stopped eating to stare at him in disbelief. It turned out that his doctor had told him that he was getting too little salt, and that he had to eat more.
When I was in high school, Grandpa got sick – he had developed a tumor on his pituitary gland. He had surgery in San Francisco, and stayed with us for six weeks of follow-up radiation treatment. Every day, he used to jog three miles to the BART station, then take a train into San Francisco, and a bus to the hospital. He would be irradiated for a couple of minutes, and then would turn around and take the bus back to the train, and the train back to Orinda, and then jog the three miles home again. On the very last day of his treatment, the bus driver made him show ID to prove that he was entitled to the senior citizen fare.
Grandpa loved genealogy, and he researched all about his ancestors and Grandma’s. He wrote a book about them all, and about himself and Grandma – I have a signed copy for you for when you are old enough. He had typed all the stories on a computer that we gave him when we got a new one, and Meemom and Aunt Barbara and Uncle Jeff all worked to put them together and to have the book printed, as a surprise for his 60th wedding anniversary.
Grandpa loved your Grandma Meamber, one of the Grandma Dorothys that you are named after, very much. They were in a terrible car accident five years ago, and were both in the hospital for a long time. At first, they had to be in separate rooms. When they could finally be in the same room, they were so happy. They had the beds moved together so they could hold hands.
When you were two months old, we traveled to Chicago and to California so all your relatives could meet you. We drove up to Yreka to see Meemom’s family on Mother’s Day weekend. Grandma and Grandpa both got to meet you, and hold you in their arms for a while. Grandpa had delivered so many babies in his career, it seemed that his hands knew just what to do as soon as he took you. He settled you in on his lap, and you just beamed and snuggled him. That was the last day I ever saw him.
I wish you’d been able to know Grandpa, but I hope that I’ll be able to keep him a little bit alive for you with the stories about him, and with all the stories he preserved of the whole family. Even though he didn’t know you for long, he loved you.
Love,
Mommy