More About Greg

Good midday.

This will be that last about Greg for a while. I want to remember about the good things in his time with us. It's never all bad.

When he was a kid, he was the cutest thing. He had a little button  nose and big eyes, and a perpetual air of naivete that was so disarming.  He was constantly keeping us on edge when he was a toddler.  He tripped in the house and nearly bit off his tongue when he was a toddler.  He staggered around the house and stepped on  a needle, prompting a late evening visit to Dr Tisdale's, and the growled remark from the doctor to me: "And where 's the other half of the needle?" (It was never found)...he inserted a bean into his ear, where it sprouted happily away until I mention his cough to the doctor who immediately got out his machine and peeked into his ear...aha! A bean!  It appears that a cough without any obvious reason is often prompted by a bean hidden away in the caverns of the middle ear. How do doctors know these things?

When Greg went to kindergarten he was struggling with phonics like all the rest. One evening we were driving in Mission Valley where all the car signs were, and I heard from the back seat, in the tones of one who is witnessing Valhalla and the Sphinx for the first time: "JOHN!  HINE!  PONTIAC!"  What an epiphany for him and for us.  He could read, and from then on for the rest of the season he read every sign we could see..."What's that one?" I asked, pointing to the Bonanza Steak House sign.  He looked and then haughtily and condescendingly said: "Bone-za-na!  What else!"  I always did think my kids were the cutest and funniest things in the world.  And I was right.

When he got older, he was often and always pondering the meaning of the world.  Many things baffled him. I remember that he was very caught by Baby Twinter, our young male kitten, who was just leaving babyhood and embarking on the mysteries of cat adolescence.  Greg had just the same attitude of bafflement on many aspects of growning up. Makes one wonder.  I think people classed as mentally ill often have just been trapped in some aspect of adolescence, for whatever reason, chemical or psychological or social. 

In any case, Greg had a wonderful quizzical sense of humor.  He was the delight of any group he was in because of his gentle clownish ability.  I guess that was a coping mechanism.  Thank goodness for it.  But it makes us miss us all the more, when the shadows get long and there is no one around to make us laugh and smile. YAZZYBEL