A long, interesting life.

Here is a picture of me and your Great Grandfather Keith. It's from sometime in the early 1980's. On his birthday I wrote a blog introducing him to you and recounting the first time you met him in person. One thing I didn't go into a lot of depth about is the fact that GG Keith loved to write. He may have written fiction, but most of the stories that I have ever read by him were about the curiosities of the life he saw around him. Grandma Kat has been doing a lot of work collecting and publishing these stories on her blog to make sure that they can live as a testament to the fact that, while he wrote, he was winking his eye at the things you or I might overlook.

He left us yesterday, after almost a century of hardship, change, and uncertainty. For him, as you can read on my Mom's blog, life became difficult very early - losing his mother at 11, the Great Depression at 12, the Second World War in his early 20's. My mother says that she never knew him when he wasn't anxious and it makes sense...he came from a time of great anxiety. The man in this picture, though, is smiling in that moment because these were the moments he fought for - peaceful moments with family. The most wonderful thing of all is that his smile - the one you see there in the picture - that's your smile. Your Mom will tell you that the first time I saw you smile I said, "She looks just like Grandpa!" He is at peace now, as Mom says, and isn't anxious about anything. The best thing is that one of the last smiles he smiled, he shared with you...right there in the flesh smiling back at him across the decades from his own lap. You were a treasure to him. As I've said before, holding you in his arms was one of the most certain joys of his life and if there is any regret, it is that the moment was much too short.

Do yourself a favor: Read his stories. My Dad always said that Keith's writing was like he was sitting next to you speaking. He loved telling them and I know he would have loved you to hear them. In the end, our stories are the only parts of us that can live forever...and these parts are so you can know him.

I love you, my girl.

Dad.