Remembering Poppy: Dia De Los Muertos
My four-year old is turning on the charm, head tipped to one side, eyelashes fluttering, smiling apple cheeks swelling with cuteness. It’s not working. “Sweetie Bug, I can’t do a puzzle with you, right now. I have to finish my work, first.”
Her face falls and the rest of her tiny frame follows suit, like a cold and saggy mylar balloon. “Ugh,” she mopes, her mouth an arching drawbridge of displeasure. “This is like washing a bagel with soap and then eating it.”
From a four-year old, that’s pretty harsh criticism. I pity the first boy to break her heart—she’s gonna publicly rip him to shreds with a wit as sharp as her great grandmother's. But her mischievous nature and crazy sense of humor is 100% inherited from her great grandfather. I do sometimes wonder, how much of her is made up of him?
Bug wasn’t yet born when her great granddad passed away, an enigmatic man her older sister knew only as “Poppy”. But oh, my, is she just like him. As he approached his eighties, type 1 diabetes turned into type 2 and ravaged his body limb by limb and organ by organ. His neighbors rallied to his side and sprang for an electric cart to restore the confidence of the still mentally spry man who had helped each of them in one way or another for so many years. I remember arriving at his cottage in Crystal Lake, Michigan the week it was delivered—race car red, charged up and ready. For the first time in weeks, he was able to get outside and visit friends on the Cove Trail Road. I walked along beside him to make sure he didn’t end up in the lake, checking that the accelerator handle was set firmly on the little picture of a turtle. But once out on the road, with the rest of the family distant dots disappearing around the bend, he leaned forward, nose almost touching the handle, and carefully, deliberately turned the dial to “rabbit”. And off he took.
Running to catch up, I can assure you he was grinning when I managed to jump on beside him and turn the darn thing off. He frowned up at me, the corners of his mouth turning down almost to his chin, mimicking Beaker from the Muppets. He slowly leaned forward, flipped the dial back to rabbit, and took us both for the best, last joy ride of what he was knew would become an increasingly crotchety life. God bless ‘im.
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