Published: 25 Nov 2019

It really was a humbling experience holding that little baby. I didn’t have anything to compare it to, but when I thought about it later I realized that I had felt the same wonderment when Mike first told me that he loved me, or when it had finally sunk into my brain that I did really have a living, breathing, loving Grandfather, and again when Mr. and Mrs. Clarke had told me they wanted me as their second son when Mike and I told them we were in love and we were engaged. I tried to explain this to Mike and I knew of all those around me, well, maybe Carole too, he would know what I was feeling after waiting so long to finally have a family. The kicker had come before we left the hospital and Sam and Carole had asked Mom and Mike and I to stay for a moment as the others left to wait for us in the lobby downstairs.

Sam said they had decided to ask if Mom would be Kate’s godmother when they had her baptized in two weeks, and then Carole asked Mike and me to be her godfathers. That was what just about dropped me to my knees. I was almost overwhelmed and Mike was also, but we knew that this was important and I was so glad that the Clarkes had insisted that I take instruction in their church back home and that we all still attended services at the local MCC church in our new town. Imagine that, me a godfather, and only a freshman in college!! Grandfather told me that night that their choices were very good ones and he hoped that we’d send him loads of pictures of the brief ceremony and the party after. I guessed from that that he wouldn’t make it up for the baptism, but he did send me a big check to make sure that Mike and I could pay for the party after the ceremony and to purchase an appropriate gift for Kate. He had sent Carole a big arrangement to the hospital and she had loved it.

The ceremony took place two weeks after the girls returned home from the hospital. I never felt so proud in my life, to be standing at the baptismal font with Mike and Mom, Mike and I standing at Mom’s sides as she held Kate in her arms. The party we hosted after was a catered affair, not a huge party, but there were about forty friends and co-workers of Kate’s parents there along with all of us from the property. We offered horseback riding, swimming in our pool, lots of eats with waiters and waitresses passing amongst us with nibbles before the luncheon was served at the marquee set up in the backyard. It was a fun day.

A few days later the group of us students living on the property began our reviewing process with Ken manning a laptop to look up any data we couldn’t rationalize amongst us students. As we had done before we ended with the most recent material covered in our classes, and we then took it another step further and went on to the next chapter in the following class text book, just to see the practical results of what we had been studying this past semester. That especially helped in writing our term papers and in one case where there were four of us in a certain class there was a question on the final that delved a bit into the future class that we would have to take in the Fall semester. We were the only ones to get that particular question correct.

We all ended the school year on the Dean’s list and again there wasn’t a grade lower than a B+ amongst us. Now we had a wedding to put the final touches on, OOPS!! I mean we had two weddings to put the final touches on. Tim and James had asked if we would mind sharing our wedding date with them, and we were so happy they were not going to wait any longer, we asked them to just join us during our ceremony and instead of two weddings we would have a double wedding service. Instead of one couple exchanging vows there would be two vow segments, one right after the other.

The joint service was to be held on the Saturday of the first week of June. We had contacted our MCC church just before Valentine’s Day, just to make sure we would get one of the coveted June weekend dates and I guess we were pretty lucky we did because the morning slot was taken, but the early afternoon time slot was open until we four grooms took it. We had liked the caterer that provided for Kate’s party so they were hired but this time there would be a dance floor and a DJ added. This time the group from Florida would accompany Grandpa up and they would stay at least a week.

It was a lively group that was waiting for the Key West contingent of our “family” two days before the combined ceremony, and they appeared just as excited to see all of us. Mike and I took Grandpa’s bags up to his room and as he unpacked, we helped, because to us he looked a little wasted, a bit haggard and tired. He was moving a bit slow as well and when we had him settled in, he told us he had something to talk over with us, and then he was going to lay down until dinner time.

He told us he had been feeling tired for some time now and there was another problem he was having; he was suddenly impotent. He told us he didn’t have a steady girlfriend or anything like that, but about once a month or twice a month he was used to having sex with another person, but about a month ago he had noticed that even his masturbation didn’t produce the desired results. He had consulted two specialists and the tests done showed he had prostate cancer, in fact the cancer had been very aggressive and now had spread to other organs and tissue masses in his body. He had opted not to have a very dubious operation that would have only resulted in him becoming a true invalid for whatever time he had left, so with some medications he was still able to function business wise, as long as his travel was curtailed and he had Jan and now Matt to help him at home with his business dealings.

I tearfully asked how long he thought he had, and he held me tight and then held a sobbing Mike and told us it could be a month or two, but most likely not longer than three months. I was sobbing hard now. My only living relative was dying and I ached for him, and I admit that I ached for myself too. Oh God this was so hard to take in, it seemed like I had just found him and now he was being taken from me. I could tell that he was exhausted, telling us his problems had wiped him out, but I couldn’t just leave him there so I took his shoes off and lifted his legs up onto the bed and Mike got in front of him and I lay down behind him, the three of us snuggled up, a bit weepy, but within fifteen minutes we were all asleep, napping until dinner was announced. It was two days before our wedding.

Apparently, Jan and Matt had been given the task of informing the others of Grandfather’s condition, because when the three of us arrived at the first floor, after cleaning our faces in Grandpa’s bathroom, everyone was there, and they all wanted to hug him. Nothing was said about his condition, in fact he steered the conversation to the weddings and teased that he’d have to shift the jet’s home base from the one in Key West to the airport in Westfield, the small plane airport nearest to us, the one we had been using. He also got caught up with everyone else and delighted in holding baby Kate, who for some reason would just cuddle into him and usually fall asleep, at least it looked that way unless he was feeding her a bottle.

He spoke to Mike and me again the next day. He informed us that a lot of his stocks and shares had already been transferred into our names and that the house in Key West now belonged to us. He explained that he had done this to cut down on our inheritance taxes, just as he had done for several of the other bequests he had planned. He said not to worry, both Jan and Matt would be staying at the house to care for it for us and they would be able to handle the business end of things for us also. We were his main beneficiaries, and everything had been explained to his “sons”, all three of them because he felt like James was just as important to us as Jan and Matt. And now Tim would be joining them as his son-in-law. He asked us what we thought about James coming here and attending the University with us all. He said that he really wasn’t joking about making Westfield the home base for the jet. The pilots would get more of a chance to pilot for others during their down time from flying his plane, James could finish his degree, or add finance to his course of study, either way it would end up being a benefit to not only him, but for us and Tim.

It was astonishing to think of us as homeowners at our ages. I mean we had just finished our first year of college, we were both 18 and about to turn 19 (me first, actually we were getting married on my birthday, Mike would have his 19^th a week later). Add to that the financial arrangements Grandpa had made that would allow us to keep that property and also to cover the pay that all these guys received from him. The fact that he already thought of us as a “couple” was just about all I could have hoped for. I had been sure that once he knew I was gay he wouldn’t want anything to do with me, but from the get go he had been accepting of my boyfriend and he had even made it easier for us by introducing us to these guys he admired and had working for him, his “sons”. Now he was making it possible for Mike and me to carry on what he had started, and he was also making plans to make sure the new additions to his extended family were also “taken care of” in their futures.

The Friday afternoon before the actual wedding we met with the pastor at the MCC church to have a run through of the actual ceremony. Because we had two couples exchanging vows of marriage it was best, we had that rehearsal. There was basically no difference except when it came to the vow exchange and after a bit of coaching from the pastor, we finally got the motions down right to the point we four wouldn’t be fumbling around in front of our family and the combined guests. We each had best “men”, Mike and I had asked Sam and Carole to stand up for us, since they were the reason, we got together in the first place. James and Tim had chosen Jan and Matt for theirs. Grandfather was asked to “give us away” to each other at the start of the ceremony, he would perform this function for both couples.

Everything worked out great. The two dozen classmates from our college classes were all there, the rest of the family was all there, Mom holding Kate. Several parishioners were there to help us celebrate our marriages, I guess they saw our bans of marriage announced in the church bulletins and wanted to support us, among them was the woman from the Town Clerk’s Office who had issued us our marriage licenses earlier in the week. As I said, everything went smoothly, that is until the pastor turned both couples to face the congregation and introduced both us couples as husbands, wed in the eyes of the State, and in the eyes of our Lord and told us we may kiss our spouses. Well that must have woken Kate up because she was hollering for a feeding, at that point she didn’t care if it was from her mother’s breast or a bottle held by another person, but she woke up hungry and she let everyone know it!!

I knew just how she felt at that moment; I was just as hungry for Mike. He must have felt the same thing because there was a lot of promises hidden in that kiss. The party after was fun, but after the first dance, where we two couples danced together for the first time as married couples, Grandfather had to go lay down for a while. We were all pretty concerned when we learned this, but Mom told us he was just tired, pleased for the four of us, but just tuckered out. He would be back down before the party was over. We did get to talk to a lot of the people there, classmates, friends, friends of friends, and just as the caterers began the after-dinner cleanup Grandfather entered the pavilion and he looked a lot better. He sat and ate a meal with the four of us at the head table and then he and Mom shared a dance out on the dance floor, a slow one that we were able to cut in on a few times, one of us with Mom while the other danced with Grandpa, both couples switching off a couple of times, much to the amusement of Dad, but then we all got him on the next slow song.

When the party had broken up and we were all heading to our respective bedrooms, grandfather asked Mike and me to walk him to his room. There he gave us each an envelope which had a check for a hundred thousand dollars in each envelope. He chuckled and told us not to tell anyone how much we got, because he had only given James and Tim checks for fifty thousand each. He got hugs and kisses which he returned to us, telling us how much he loved us both.

I have to admit that Mike and I didn’t want to go anywhere for a honeymoon. We felt that each trip to Key West was a kind of honeymoon for us and apparently James and Tim felt the same, so we two newlywed couples spent the next several days riding out on the property, sometimes together, sometimes alone, and sometimes with the rest of the family. A couple of times Mike and I found ourselves out for a jog or a run and we’d find ourselves in some secluded copse of trees or a romantic meadow where we experienced the joys of loving your spouse outdoors in nature. It was a lot of fun and no one made fun of us for doing this. I’m glad we did spend our honeymoon like we did, being around everyone else, except for our private time, because we got to spend a lot of time with grandpa.

He talked a lot about my Grandmother who had passed several years ago, and he talked a lot about my mother, who had died within minutes after I was born. He told us about how my mother had fallen in love with a college student during her last year in high school, and about how she thought he came from Colorado, which was why she had been in Denver, trying to find a trace of him. He talked about building his inherited business, the hardware store and lumber yard in Key West and how he had parlayed that into the various other businesses he still owned. He told us that Jan had a firm grip on all his investments and would spend time with us over time to the point we could run them ourselves or be able to hire the right staff to do that for us once Jan and Matt retired. His opinion was that James and Tim should become more involved with the company after they had finished their educations.

It almost was unbearable when the Florida contingent left on the following Thursday. I somehow knew that we might never see Grandfather again, but in talking with him, and Jan and Matt, we realized that we would seem like we were hovering over him, waiting for him to die, when all he wanted was for us to be happy together and not to have to witness his death. They assured us they would call us once a week to keep us up to date and we told them we would keep calling on Sunday evenings to talk to Grandpa.

So, by the end of June we were already getting ready to go back to the University for our Sophomore year, but this year we would have an additional student amongst us. James had been accepted as an incoming Junior and he and Tim would be living out of Tim’s room, now their room. We were gathering up our supplies and books for the upcoming semester. One thing we all had to do, including Mom and Dad and Carole and Sam, was to meet with a financial planner at the local branch of a national chain of banks, the same national bank Grandfather and all the “sons” used. When it was Mike and my turn, he stood to shake our hands and then produced print outs of our current account balances. Mike and I had deposited our wedding present checks and we knew that we had at least two hundred and fifteen thousand in the savings account and about three thousand in our checking account that we could access via our debit cards or checks.

But when we looked at that day’s totals for both our accounts we were stunned, almost giddy and I told the man that there must have been an error made. The savings account had over seventeen million dollars in it and our checking account had over fifty thousand in it. Below these totals were a bunch of lines showing what our current investment accounts were worth (stocks and bonds) and that had over twenty million as a total. The bottom line had a net figure of thirty million, two hundred and twenty-three thousand. The investment counselor told us that we had to get that money working for us, if we invested most of it we would have that money earning enough to not only pay the taxes on its earnings, but we’d end up with quite a good profit over time. He had drawn up his proposal for our investments, with the bulk of the money in safe, long term investments, but with the possibility of some major profits should one of the companies either sell, thus earning a major profit for us, or develop some new technology which could provide the same results. The rest of the investments he saw as an opportunity for high growth. These were newer technology companies that could skyrocket in value if they continued to produce quality products that would be in high demand. He had a couple of million in interest bearing accounts that would always hold their value and gain some interest over a year’s time, he called that our nest egg account.

It all sounded good to us, but I wanted to talk this all over with Jan, so we made another appointment to see our local guy in two days’ time. We took his prospectus with us and again we got treated like seasoned adults when we left. Jan asked us to fax the prospectus to him and after a day of running some figures he said that although he liked that our funds were to be for the most part in conservative investment, he also liked that the speculation funds were not going to create a big loss for us if one or two didn’t work out in the long run. He said he liked this proposal so much he was going to use it when he and Matt went to see their own investment guy in a day or two, not that they had as much to worry about as we did, but that Grandfather had also been very generous to them too.

It seems that Grandpa’s generosity extended to everyone at both houses. The general consensus among us all was that by the time the last one of us guys graduated from college we would all be millionaires, and this also applied to Mom and Dad and Sam and Carole as well. Even little Kate would not have to worry about money by the time it was her turn to go to college.

As I said, we students were getting ready to return to our studies when the campus opened for the next semester the last week of August. Supplies were bought, books were bought or ordered, and our wardrobes had been spruced up. The cars had been serviced and we had made sure that Tim had enough room for James to move in with him, which happened in the middle of July when the plane was hangared at the airport in Westfield, the pilots all settled in their shared apartment there and James picked up in the pickup by his spouse to transport his suitcases and boxes to the house in Granby. We didn’t see them for two hours and they were freshly showered and changed when they came down to help with dinner.

James settled in among us just fine and we found out that he had actually had a great first two years of college (intending to major in finance) before meeting the scumbag that cheated on him. He was as excited about becoming a student again as he was to finally be with Tim again. The next several weeks would just act to cement the bond between them, making their marriage just that much stronger. They joined us horseback riding and for picnics out on the property. Dad was successful in renting out the fields so there was a steady income there for the property, but Mom kept him busy around the house too as well. There was a new retractable canopy that shaded the huge deck off the back of the house, she had him change up some of the window coverings so that more sunlight came into the kitchen during the day, some of the plantings from the front of the house were moved to the rear so she could have room for more flowers in the front (which she had him plant!). And he took care of the stable twice a day, mucking out the stalls and making sure there was adequate water and feed available for the horses. We helped him where we could, as after classes started our time during the days would be limited. The first week in August, just as we all were packing to visit Grandpa for a week, I got a call from Jan, it was about three in the afternoon and we were supposed to meet the jet in Westfield the next morning for our trip to Key West. Grandpa had been sounding more and more tired as the weeks went by, no matter what time of day I called. Matt and Jan had warned me that he was slowing down considerably, but his heart rate and blood pressure were within acceptable limits and when he was alert, he was just as sharp mentally as they could ever remember him.

Jan’s call was just the complete opposite, he was weeping and could hardly be understood, and I knew, I just knew that my Grandfather had passed. Matt finally took the phone from Jan and explained that Grandfather had been fine that morning and as had become his habit, after lunch he had stretched out on a lounge by the pool and an hour later when Jan went to rouse him, he was dead. He hadn’t been in any discomfort that they knew of, he had just slipped away. He was currently at the morgue but the funeral parlor was picking him up as we talked and there would be an afternoon wake at the island’s funeral parlor the day after tomorrow and then cremation and his ashes placed with his wife’s in the private family mausoleum at the town’s cemetery the following afternoon. He finished with saying that he and Jan really needed us with them through all this. I assured him that in fact we were mostly packed now, but maybe we should pack a few changes of some better clothes under the circumstances. He chuckled and told me no suits, slacks and dress shirts would be fine as most locals would be in shirts and shorts most likely.

Since it was a Sunday afternoon, I had no problem gathering everyone in the family room of the main house. Mike came running as soon as I started calling for everyone to gather and he knew, he could tell by my paleness and the frog in my throat. We had talked about what we both felt about Grandfather and his imminent death, but as soon as he put his arms around me, we both started bawling like babies. As the others joined us, I guess they figured out what had happened and soon we were all quite teary and clinging to each other. At some point Dad asked if any arrangements had been worked out and I explained what would happen the day after we arrived and that his ashes would be interred with my Grandmother’s the following day. I also told them what Matt had said about what would be appropriate clothing for the wake and the internment down there and that we could expect temperatures in the 80’s with a lot of humidity.

We all made some adjustments to our clothing choices to pack and we all retired to our rooms by ten thirty for our seven in the morning pick-up by the shuttle bus to the airport, James would be our steward for our flights. Our flight was much more subdued than our other excursions to Key West had been. I guess we were all being somewhat introspective at this point. We were all losing someone who in our time of knowing him had proved to be a kind and caring man to each and every one of us, and had become a benefactor to us all as well. Grandpa would be missed by each and every one of us.

We again helped James clean up after we had landed so we could travel as a group to the house in a van that Matt had shown up in to meet us. He came right up to me and grabbed me in a big hug and we just held each other and swayed back and forth and then Mike was there with us and soon the whole family was there with us. Matt told us to try and get a lot of it out, it wasn’t going to get any easier for us to deal with it, just be gentle with Jan, as he was suffering as much as the rest of us, but he had also suffered a bad fall on the back stairs, running in to tell Matt about Grandpa after he had found him out on the patio. He had some badly bruised ribs and a torn cartilage between two of those ribs.

We were all careful of Jan’s ribs once we arrived at the house, which for some reason felt colder to me. Once he had greeted and been greeted, he steered everyone to their usual rooms, but stayed with Mike and me for a while. Matt joined us as those two watched as we unpacked but I could tell Jan was hurting just as much as I was and soon we were sitting next to each other and he was telling me how much my Grandfather loved me and I was telling him how much his “father” loved him and Matt.

Jan said that he and Matt had to prepare me, and my spouse, Mike, for some things that might come up, especially at the wake the next afternoon. There would be just about a hundred and fifty people there from just the hardware store and lumber yard, all of them grieving, but most likely also worried about their jobs. Grandfather had been worried about this and he and Matt and Jan had come up with a little speech that they wanted me to make about an hour into the wake. A speech? Was he kidding? But I saw the seriousness in his face and Matt’s, and he tried to explain how important this would be for all the employees, and their families, to hear from me that there were no plans to change anything at the stores. I asked why me? Why not him?

He replied that he was only the business manager, that I was now, or as soon as the will was processed through probate court, I was the new owner of both businesses, and it should come from me. He told me that the way the will was set up I inherited the bulk of grandfather’s shares, and along with a portion of the rest of Grandpa’s shares that Mike will inherit, the two of us together would control those two businesses. That was what Grandfather wanted. As far as the rest of it, well, we would be told about that after the internment. Mike shyly asked the rest of what? But, all Jan or Matt would say was that it was all under control and they would be right with us every step of the way.

Before leaving our room, Jan gave me the prepared speech that they expected me to make at the funeral parlor the next day. Mike and I read it together and I could see why they wanted to reassure the employees that their jobs were secure, but this was written like grandfather would be reading it. We had been to the stores before, in fact as we had done our strolls, we had stopped in to both of them, since they both shared a big lot and a really good-sized parking lot. But most of the management was older people who had earned their positions by being trusted and capable employees for many years already. What Mike and I noticed on those trips was that the department employees on the sales floors were not all that much older than us. This speech, these words of encouragement, were geared to the older crowd, and not to disrespect them or anything, but the actual sales force outnumbered them by at least three to one. We had some work to do.

So we talked about it and decided right off that the employees, all of them, needed to hear Grandpa’s words of thanks for their loyal service to him over these past years, but I wanted them to know that someone else was in charge now, and Mike wanted that to be a low key thing, not aggressive in any way, after all, I was younger that more than three quarters of the staff. Mike didn’t want that to be emphasized, he wanted me to be assuring, but definitely not aggressive, that wasn’t me. We played with the wording, even after dinner, which Mom had delivered from the Chinese restaurant down the street.

We all walked to the funeral parlor the next afternoon, giving ourselves a half hour there by ourselves with Grandpa. This was another first for me. I had never been to a wake before and had never seen a dead person before, but this was my last chance to spend time with Grandpa and I wasn’t going to be left behind to babysit Kate, Jan and Matt had arranged for Kendra from across the street who had two little girls herself to watch over Kate for the afternoon.

The parlor seemed huge to us, that is until we noticed that all the folding walls had been retracted to make this huge space with the coffin sitting on a bier at the far end of the room set up with folding chairs set up on either side of the aisle leading to the coffin. Kneelers were set up so six people could pay their respects at a time, and a podium was at the foot of the arrangement, the coffin barely visible for all the flower arrangements behind and in front of the coffin. Mike and I held hands as we approached and knelt down to say a prayer. I’m glad that neither of us had to speak out loud because we were both so choked up it was all we could do to stand up and let others have a turn after we had silently prayed for Grandpa.

Over the hour after the doors were opened to the public, we stood in a sort of receiving line on the right side of the coffin. We asked Jan and Matt to head up the line because of a couple of reasons, one was that Grandpa thought of them as his sons, and the other was that they knew more of the people than the rest of us all together knew, they lived here and even had interactions with a lot of the locals and employees. It was neat the way this worked. Jan and Matt would introduce Mike and me as the grandsons, we would introduce Mom and Dad as our parents, they would introduce Tim and James as their sons and they would introduce Sam and Carole as their sister and brother-in-law and they would introduce Ben and Ken as their brothers.

The folding chairs were pretty full when the pastor from the local MCC church arrived two hours later but those standing in groups soon found seats or stood in back of the last row. Matt introduced us all to the pastor before he made his little talk about grandfather, extolling his virtues. He then turned to me and asked me to say a few words. I went to the podium and removed the folded piece of paper that Mike and I had worked on for hours and hours yesterday. I introduced myself and my husband Mike and then spoke almost from memory, hardly glancing at the now unfolded paper on the top of the podium.

“My Grandfather was a man on a mission for over seventeen years, he was determined to find me. He didn’t know for sure that I even existed, it was a gut feeling he had, that he and my Grandmother had. Any of you who knew my grandparents for over seventeen years know that they had a daughter who left home right after she graduated from high school, never to be seen by them again. She left to find the student she had met who had fathered me before he went back to his home state which she thought was Colorado. I was born there nineteen years ago, my mother died in childbirth and I was raised in care by the state.

“Grandfather’s investigators never found me, we found each other through a DNA search that we both had sent samples in to. That happened just over a year and a half ago. In getting to know my grandfather, and him me, we bonded like we should have since the day I was born.

“In learning about him, and his life before I came into it, he often mentioned the stores and the folks who made it possible for him to develop them from the little mom and pop stores he had inherited from his folks. He had nothing but praise for those people that worked with him to make the stores the vital businesses they are today. He was so proud to tell me that he promoted when openings were available, he hired those that had energy and hidden talents. People he would be proud to call his staff, just like he “adopted” my friends as family, eventually making it possible for us to marry the loves of our lives and still attend college classes, he embraced all of you as his home town family. Mike and I will probably not be living here year round, but his adopted sons, Jan and Matt will be and every time we come to visit we want to see the same faces working at the stores, happy to be there, happy to help the locals and construction companies find what they need and be happy to come back to see those helpful store employees again. For the foreseeable future and beyond we don’t want to see any changes at the stores that do not benefit all the employees. Everyone’s job is safe. I doubt very much that Mike and I will take an active part in running the store on a day to day basis, but Jan and Matt will be here acting in our absence until we come back to see all of you on our next vacation. Thank you all so much for the love and respect you’ve all shown my Grandfather over the years.”

I certainly wasn’t expecting a standing ovation, but the clapping was so loud that I am sure that Grandpa heard it while he and grandma got all caught up in Heaven. I was pretty wiped out by then and Mike led me to one of the kneelers so we could say a final goodbye to Grandpa, Mike’s arm hugging my shoulders as we knelt there, our heads bowed in prayer. We were soon surrounded behind us by our family, everyone patting us on the back before they too said their last prayers before we left the funeral parlor. It was a pretty somber group of us at dinner that night, but Matt started telling us how he came to be living here and how Grandpa kept finding things for Jan and Matt to do together when Matt wasn’t being the attendant on the jet.

That started everyone telling stories about Grandpa and although we had to go through the funeral tomorrow, the stories left us all with some wonderful, if bittersweet, memories of the man. Mike and I cuddled up and he kept asking me if I was alright. I decided to prove to him that physically I was OK, but he stopped me and said, “Jason I love you even more now than when I first fell in love with you at Sam and Carole’s wedding. I love you enough to make love to you right now, but if you’re just trying to make me think that you are alright, don’t. I above all the others know how much you loved Grandpa, that you’ll always love him, as will I, but Jason, you need time to mourn him as well. Making love to me isn’t mourning him, especially as we are both hurting, But I need to be held, to let myself grieve and I think you do to, so let’s try that tonight, just hold me and I’ll hold you and we’ll cry ourselves to sleep so we can say our final goodbyes to him tomorrow.”

I told you he was smart, but did you know how difficult it was for me after we first met, and he could read me like a book? Not even Carole, who was my caseworker for a couple of years knew everything about me, but Mike did even after just meeting me. I’d never met someone who could read me like that, who became even closer than what I thought a sibling would be like. We were husbands, we were as close as two human beings could be. I was just so frightened that our inheritance from Grandpa was going to somehow tear us apart somehow. I sobbed this into Mike’s ear as we lay entwined on the bed, but my smart husband had an answer to that. He told me that that was why Grandfather had hired Jan and Matt to be the financial directors for his companies, so that we didn’t have to be physically involved. Grandpa knew we wanted to teach; he would never expect us to give up on those dreams.

Yes, we’d be consulted on major issues, but the day to day running of all of Grandpa’s business concerns was best left to those with the knowledge and experience to deal with them. Mike just made so much sense, and with that weight lifted I was finally able to fall asleep. We had the funeral Mass tomorrow and the internment of his urn with Grandmother’s at the family mausoleum at the quirky Key West cemetery after. After that Jan had said we should all probably eat lunch here at the house, as a meeting with all of us at the house was set up with Grandfather’s lawyer, where the will would be read and a lot of things made much more clear to all of us and a few more surprises revealed.

Art receives no payment for his efforts other than your emails. You may contact him by email: ArtWest at CastleRoland dot Net

15,886 views