1 Great Man + 1 Great Life

What makes me saddest about Grandpa passing on Wednesday is that my nine-month-old son never had the opportunity to meet him in person. Grey didn't get to visit Florida in October because Grandma was sick … and although we booked a trip to Florida for March 27, a meeting was not meant to be.

They did FaceTime on several occasions, and Grey received Grandpa's sage advice back on June 1st, when my baby was just two weeks old. As noted on Instagram, the altekocher instructed the newborn as follows: “You just wash your crotch and tuchis. Those are the important parts."

Such was David Greenberg's life – always teaching, often joking, sometimes doing both at the same time.

Grey is here today, present with his great-grandfather for the first time in a way we never expected. Luckily, David's four other grandsons Colby, Davis, Shane and Zachary all had the privilege to know him, and they were all there in Florida with him in his final days and moments.

In recent years I had the opportunity to visit and bond with Grandpa many times. Staying in his condo, we enjoyed many hours doing nothing, which to us was everything. Time was spent entirely in two rooms – the den and the kitchen, or maybe three if you count the random trip to 3G's deli. Our conversations were occasionally topical – politics, business, current events – but they always included his stories. His history.

Grandpa was a storyteller. A man whose parents came to America seeking hope and opportunity. A man who climbed from a cramped, crowded tenement on Henry Street to own homes on Marvelwood Drive and Clunie Place. A man who played ball in the street and pranks on the roof. A man who walked across nearly the whole of Manhattan to become the first in his family to earn a college diploma. A man who served his country, attaining rank of private first class. A man who talked his way into preferred military assignments and better jobs and prettier girlfriends. A man who traveled to multiple continents and whose family tree branches extended across oceans. A man whose wise eyes and weathered hands observed a different time, a different world, a different way of life.

Me, I'm an inquisitor. Every story Grandpa told, I asked questions. Our sessions would go on for hours; neither of us had anywhere to go.

A few years ago I recorded some of our conversations on video. I haven't looked at them since, as I have long been saving them for moments soon to come, those where Millers and Greenbergs and Freedmans and Neustats cannot reach David Greenberg on the phone or by FaceTime or when looking to the right after entering apartment 14902. I recorded Grandpa so that we will never forget his stories, so that we can hear his voice again, and so that those little pishers who didn't get to hear his voice much will experience just a little of the man I knew.

Aside from my parents, no person has had as valuable an impact on my life as my grandfather. He paid for my college education, he paid for my summer camp. And he did the same for Andi, Jeffrey and Lauren, too. He established trust accounts that helped in important and challenging times during our 20s. These were things he plotted before we were born, and whose impacts are everlasting. I am not who or where I am without his support or guidance.

Until Wednesday, Grandpa was my safety. I always knew that regardless of the problem that arose, Grandpa could solve it. His smarts, his wealth, his experience, his guile … but mostly because it's true what the coffee mug promised: “when all else fails, ask Grandpa.” Mine always made me feel safe in life.

When I was young Grandpa taught me about apples, and he taught me about oranges – never actually math – only ever fruit or some other instrument. As I grew older, he spent hours teaching me about stocks and bonds and interest and coupons and yield.

Grandpa did teach me – or try to teach me – some things that didn't catch on as well as the math … like how to play golf, reasons for keeping a kosher home, how to eat soup really really hot, how to send back soup when it's not really really hot, why one should wear a sweater in Florida even when it's quite hot, how to leave really bad tips ...

But he did share with me many things I grew quite fond of … like going to the dinner theatre, learning Yiddish and as a result German, visiting the Smithsonian museums in Washington D.C., being a smartass, checking out books at the library, making gerichts, dining at restaurants, how to be a mensch …

He was a great man but a terrible driver, especially at night. But little entertained his grandchildren more than Grandpa driving while Grandma told him how to drive from the passenger seat.

Although I would have loved another five years of the man I knew, I am glad that I never have to get used to saying “Grandpa” instead of “Grandma & Grandpa,” for to me – and presumably all of you, David and Jackie were as inseparable as gefilte fish and the gel the gefilte fish comes in. Even if you wanted to separate them, you couldn't. Did David Joseph and Jacqueline Elaine Greenberg ever spend more than a couple hours apart?

For all the hilarity in the front seat of the Buick, and all the agitation whenever Grandma wasn't ready to leave on time, these were two people who truly, genuinely, deeply loved one another. To see them so often holding hands while watching TV in the den and just four months ago holding hands and rubbing each other's palms gently while listening to Beethoven … theirs was a bond forged not just on Bubbe's cooking but on the simple equation of 1+1=2, that these two beautiful people were even more beautiful as a couple.

He lived for her, and when she was gone so too was he. While we all miss him immensely, he missed her immeasurably.

The greatest story he never told me was of his love for his wife. That story did not require telling.

And I guess he preferred to keep the ending to himself.

But the end of his life and their life together is not the end of David Greenberg's impact. He and his legacy will live on in Lynne, in Paul, in Andi, in Jeffrey, in Lauren, in me and in all five of his great-grandsons and perhaps some great-grandchildren yet to come.

Everybody out of the pool.