My Grandpa

My grandpa was a brilliant man. After he had his stroke, it was often hard to remember this simple fact. But my grandpa was a brilliant man. He was a man who played piano, in a bar, in order to pay for medical school. He was a man who would rewrite his own captions and punch lines on birthday cards because Hallmark wasn’t clever enough for him. He was a man who loved to travel the world and ski, and boat.

​My grandpa was a brilliant man, and that’s why I’ve chosen to share a story that celebrates that. And that’s why I’m not going to tell you about how he spent the whole afternoon teaching Gigi how to Heelie, when we had all written it off as impossible. Or about how he instilled a love for Barq’s Rootbeer and frozen Sees candy in me that, to the distaste of my dentist, I will have for my entire life. And I’m not going to talk about how he would take Gigi and me on snail hunts or about how we would laugh at him and think that he looked like an egg, when he would swim out and float in the Ventura Harbor.

 Instead, I want to share a story about my first day of college, at which grandpa was no way a part of. I remember walking in to my first 8am lecture, filled with 200 people. An ancient looking Professor wrote the word “dinoflagellates” on the board. With no introductions, he continued to speak, quickly, for the next hour and half as I raced to jot down every word.

 That afternoon, when I went the lab portion of the course, that was filled with about half the students, the professor told us about himself, including the fact that he was Lithuanian, and then asked us each to fill out a notecard with some background on ourselves. Reaching for a few extra points, I scribbled in my right hand corner, “I’m Lithuanian too.”

 Two days later, as our second lecture concluded, he asked, “If there’s a Ms. Grasska present, please see me.”

 200 kids, day 3 of College and somehow, I’ve already done something wrong. I stood up, and walked to the front of the class, as all 199 other kids filtered out.

 “I’m Melia Grasska,” I said.

 “You aren’t related to a Dr. Grasska, are you?”  he asked.

​“Ya, I am,” I said, “he’s my grandpa.”

​“Ms. Grasska, your grandpa, is the reason I can walk.”

I’ll say that part again for us.

“Ms. Grasska, your grandpa, is the reason I can walk. When I was a kid, I had a condition and every doctor I saw told me that I was going to loose my legs. But it’s because of your grandpa that I can stand here, today. Next time you see him, please tell him thank you, for me.”

 Naturally I raced to call the house at Los Diego’s Way, so excited to tell grandpa of this coincidence. But when I spoke to him, he told me, much to my disappointment, that he had no recollection of this, and for the longest time, I chalked it up to his senility.

But, as I’ve given it some space, I’ve realized that it wasn’t the senility that caused my grandpa to forget, it was that he helped so many people and that he changed the lives of so many patients that he simply forgot giving this man the gift of his legs, an approximate 40 years from the miracle. And that only makes me think, what were the miracles that were worth remembering to him? 

Despite my favorite memories with grandma and grandpa swimming in Ventura, or eating candy, or watching Westerns, or playing on the boat, this is my favorite story about my grandpa, because it shares a part of him that I never knew, but yet was so important to so many people.

And, I can only pray that I will go on to make such profound differences in the lives of others, as the ones that my grandpa has made. And I can only hope, that however we all choose to remember him, that the one thing we will all promise to never forget, is how brilliant of a man he was.