Fruit and Chocolate with a Side of Herring

“It all goes to the same place,” my grandfather would say. My grandfather was a classy man who had experienced life. As a first lieutenant in the army, he had liberated concentration camps at the end of World War II, he made an honest living, and always saved more money than he spent, and if nothing else, was one of the most honest men you’d ever meet (which wasn’t always a good thing, like I said, he was brutally honest). But as he got older, he wasn’t venturing out like he used to and didn’t have crazy stories to tell us. Toward the end of his life, the little things he did were priceless and ended up making the best stories.

Later in his life we called him Mr. Magoo. He was definitely a wacky one; you never knew what was next. One day he got in a fight with an elderly man for keeping the lights on during a movie and the next day he had proposed to a red headed fox (as the old men from the assisted living referred to her as)!

Old Mr. Magoo has done some crazy things, some more extreme than others, but the little things he did were just priceless. Even thinking about the little quirky things he did tugs at my heart strings. Not because I am sad, but because I am happy. I love that my grandfather always walked over a mile to the supermarket to get a bouquet of flowers and I love that my grandfather always had two dozen bananas, even though he one of the dozen he had.

The little quirky thing he did were so memorable. “It was kind of like a chocolate covered pretzel,” my mom said simultaneously holding a piece of chocolate and gasping for breath of air over her hysterical laughing. I looked over at his table and saw the following all in the same dish: fruit, chocolate, and herring. And yes, herring, the fish you may eat for breakfast, if you can even handle that much of it. No words had to be said, we just started laughing, laughing and well laughing. Like old Mr. Magoo said, “It all goes to the same place.” Yet I question if he really meant a variety of fruit, Hershey chocolate and some fish.

I honestly can tell you I don’t know what was going on in his head when he made this bowl of…food, and I wasn’t going to ask him because frankly it didn’t matter. If that’s the way he liked it, then I am happy that he was happy. The little things he does are forever with me. But unfortunately, he will not.

My heart ached, my eyes hurt, I felt I had dented lines down my cheeks from the non-stop tears. I hated it, seeing the black dresses, the black stockings, that one nice looking black shirt that had been hanging in the closet until that day came. You know that shit, the one that is not very dressy, but conservative. The one you wear to the choral concerts for not more than an hour. I hated it. I sat there on the couch, holding myself when my mind starts racing through all these memories of me and my grandfather. Us at the beach, holiday dinners, but what kind of memory would this be without some fruit, chocolate and herring?

The little things make life worth living. This I believe.

Dedicated to Henry Noyer a.k.a. Mr. Magoo