Add my father in law to the
list of coronavirus victims.
He passed away over the weekend, just a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.
In his last days, not only did he battle COVID, but also pneumonia.
He will be buried in a graveside ceremony on Tuesday morning.
My wife and her brothers are grieving, but they are all holding up pretty well.
My son has now lost his two grandfathers in the span of about four months, and it is hard on him, but he is managing pretty well.
My father in law, like my father, was a Marine during the Korean War. Unlike my father—who was supposed to go to Korea but had two sets of marching orders and ended up not going to the front lines—my father in law went to Korea, fought in the rice patties, and actually was injured while there.
Incredibly, my father and my father in law did cross paths 70 years ago while in the service.
We found out that while both were young soldiers, they served at the same place—I think it was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina—for a few months.
My father was a cook, so you can say that my father actually prepared meals for my father in law during this time there.
For those few months, the two of them walked the same paths, trained in the same camp, ate in the same mess hall … but they didn’t know each other at all, just one Marine passing the other Marine on the same base.
They were just two Marines among hundreds at the base at the time, with the only link being that they were both from New York, and little else.
Who knows how many times they actually, literally crossed paths while there, yet never knew each other at all.
Funny how paths cross like this … some 40 years later, my wife and I linked the two together again when we married in 1993.
My father in law was a staunch New York Mets fan, and his daughter married into a family of staunch New York Yankees fans.
I find this all so funny, because my father, a staunch Yankees fan, married into a family of staunch Brooklyn Dodgers fans.
I guess in both cases, opposites attract.
We had not seen my father in law in person since February, or right before the virus shut everything down.
We had seen him on a few FaceTime video chats, but we had not seen him in the flesh for 10 months.
My wife video chatted with him about a month or five weeks ago, and she said it was completely remarkable how good he looked.
Than she video chatted with him about a week ago, and she said that he looked terrible, sounded incoherent and looked like he was sick.
She was right, and then some.
What is the most disheartening is that my wife and her two brothers never had a chance to say goodbye to him in person. Once he got COVID, that was pretty much impossible.
And when he got it, coupled with pneumonia and a Parkinson’s Disease—a pre-existing condition—he went pretty quickly.
I broke the news to my wife after she came home from work on Saturday afternoon. It was not an easy thing for me to do, but I think my wife kind of knew what was going on, and when she was told, I just kind of figured that she somehow knew already.
Call it womanly intuition or what have you, but she knew how low he was, and when I told her, it seemed that it just validated something that she kind of already knew, or at least knew was coming.
My father in law was a Marine, a father, a hard worker and a grandfather to his two grandsons. He lived a full life.
He will be put to rest on Tuesday, but I have mentioned on the Facebook posts announcing his death that his legacy will live on with his three children and his two grandchildren.
Think good thoughts of him, the good times that they had with him, and that will be his legacy.
And the fact that his two grandchildren got to know him so well … they will carry on that legacy to the next generation.
As for me, I was just the in law, the guy that married into the family, and I really never got to know my mother in law, who was very ill when I met my wife in the early 1990s and who passed away a few months after we were married.
She seemed like a sweet lady.
I got to know my father in law over the years, and I genuinely liked him. I always asked him, “Did you watch the game?” and I needled him about being a Mets fan as my father did too, but the needling was never vicious, just fun.
Like all of us, he had his faults, but generally, he was a good guy, a good father and a good grandfather.
I will miss him.
He passed away over the weekend, just a few weeks short of his 89th birthday.
In his last days, not only did he battle COVID, but also pneumonia.
He will be buried in a graveside ceremony on Tuesday morning.
My wife and her brothers are grieving, but they are all holding up pretty well.
My son has now lost his two grandfathers in the span of about four months, and it is hard on him, but he is managing pretty well.
My father in law, like my father, was a Marine during the Korean War. Unlike my father—who was supposed to go to Korea but had two sets of marching orders and ended up not going to the front lines—my father in law went to Korea, fought in the rice patties, and actually was injured while there.
Incredibly, my father and my father in law did cross paths 70 years ago while in the service.
We found out that while both were young soldiers, they served at the same place—I think it was Camp Lejeune, North Carolina—for a few months.
My father was a cook, so you can say that my father actually prepared meals for my father in law during this time there.
For those few months, the two of them walked the same paths, trained in the same camp, ate in the same mess hall … but they didn’t know each other at all, just one Marine passing the other Marine on the same base.
They were just two Marines among hundreds at the base at the time, with the only link being that they were both from New York, and little else.
Who knows how many times they actually, literally crossed paths while there, yet never knew each other at all.
Funny how paths cross like this … some 40 years later, my wife and I linked the two together again when we married in 1993.
My father in law was a staunch New York Mets fan, and his daughter married into a family of staunch New York Yankees fans.
I find this all so funny, because my father, a staunch Yankees fan, married into a family of staunch Brooklyn Dodgers fans.
I guess in both cases, opposites attract.
We had not seen my father in law in person since February, or right before the virus shut everything down.
We had seen him on a few FaceTime video chats, but we had not seen him in the flesh for 10 months.
My wife video chatted with him about a month or five weeks ago, and she said it was completely remarkable how good he looked.
Than she video chatted with him about a week ago, and she said that he looked terrible, sounded incoherent and looked like he was sick.
She was right, and then some.
What is the most disheartening is that my wife and her two brothers never had a chance to say goodbye to him in person. Once he got COVID, that was pretty much impossible.
And when he got it, coupled with pneumonia and a Parkinson’s Disease—a pre-existing condition—he went pretty quickly.
I broke the news to my wife after she came home from work on Saturday afternoon. It was not an easy thing for me to do, but I think my wife kind of knew what was going on, and when she was told, I just kind of figured that she somehow knew already.
Call it womanly intuition or what have you, but she knew how low he was, and when I told her, it seemed that it just validated something that she kind of already knew, or at least knew was coming.
My father in law was a Marine, a father, a hard worker and a grandfather to his two grandsons. He lived a full life.
He will be put to rest on Tuesday, but I have mentioned on the Facebook posts announcing his death that his legacy will live on with his three children and his two grandchildren.
Think good thoughts of him, the good times that they had with him, and that will be his legacy.
And the fact that his two grandchildren got to know him so well … they will carry on that legacy to the next generation.
As for me, I was just the in law, the guy that married into the family, and I really never got to know my mother in law, who was very ill when I met my wife in the early 1990s and who passed away a few months after we were married.
She seemed like a sweet lady.
I got to know my father in law over the years, and I genuinely liked him. I always asked him, “Did you watch the game?” and I needled him about being a Mets fan as my father did too, but the needling was never vicious, just fun.
Like all of us, he had his faults, but generally, he was a good guy, a good father and a good grandfather.
I will miss him.
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