Every Sunday my dad would call his parents, and they would chat. They did this for 25 years. I selfishly did not like talking on the phone. I saw it as nothing more than an obligation to talk to anyone. Guppy was a tricky Canadian man who had daddy-long-legs with tube socks and velcro shoes. Guppy would play some Thelonious Monk or Dizzy Gillespie while we ate and hung out at his house, and he would always ask his grandchildren to tell the orchestra in the basement that they can eat now. It wasn’t until I was twelve that I realized: there was no orchestra in the basement. I was a slow learner. My dad would stand in the kitchen whenever he talked to his parents. He knew at some point I would sneak towards the pantry.

    “Brooks, it’s Guppy.” I gave my dad the cut-throat sign.

    “I got homework.”    

    “Yeah he’s right here dad. Let him tell you about how busy he is.”

    I gave big-eyes to my Dad and prepared myself for an edifying conversation with my Guppy.

    “Hey… Brooks. Have you heard about the cannonballs in Siberia?” I heard this one a lot yet it never gets old.

    “How about them Guppy?”

    “Oh man, they are shooting through the roof!”

    This was a great interlude into more jokes.

    “Hey listen boss, I need you to do something for me.” In the spirit of teenage angst I stared down my dad: why do you do this to me?

    “What’s up Gup?”

    “You gotta talk to my principal. She refuses -with benign neglect- to let me pass through kindergarten until I get my finger-painting down. The woman knows I am not a good finger-painter and smites me in spite of me. You gotta talk to her.”

    “Don’t worry Gups, I will talk to her.”

    “Thanks boss. I would really appreciate it. Make sure it goes out to miss Shirley Temple. So boss, how’s school going?”

    These were our conversations. I never understood why my grandpa felt that it was so important to muse around like this,. He was a successful and serious business man. I thought he would rather be having those conversations: the problem-solving ones. I used to cherish how quirky and outlandish these conversations were, but then I became a teenager. I was in the upper-echelon of intellectual conversations about the dynamics of Seinfeld or how to properly throw a chicken nugget in the lunch room without a single teacher noticing. It was hard for me to think that these conversations meant anything to Guppy. But then he was gone.    

    “Spring has sprung, the grass has riz, 

    I wonder where the birdie is.

    The birdie is on the wing. 

    Huh, that’s funny, I thought the wing was on the bird?”

    My grandpa got very sick in the spring and into the summer.

    “He will bounce back.” My dad said.

    We made our way up to Long Beach Island for a family reunion and saw a frail Guppy. His wits had been fully infested with dementia. His pleasant presence and the way he told stories of how he lost his thumb in the war (he would just hide his thumb and then say he lost it over seas while chopping onions) or stories of how he would wake up my dad with a revving chainsaw when it was time to get up for school, they were gone. He was a great storyteller, and now we had to remember them ourselves, but remember them specifically how Guppy had told them. I had never seen the patriarch so vulnerable.

    Guppy had passed a couple days after our family trip. His death was my first real death. I remember telling my dad about a job I had just gotten. I was excited. His response being, “that’s great buddy. Well bad news, Guppy passed today.” I was out getting pizza with my friends. It was a very weird moment. I sat and thought. I ordered my pizza, and thought. All those conversations I couldn’t get back. My Guppy was it, and I never treated those conversations like I should have. Some may say grandpas are a kind of universal thing. This is true, but nonetheless they mean the world to some and to others they mean a decrepit alcoholic who makes racists comments that only your old man’s old man could make. I had grown numb to the goofball my Guppy was and the legitimate love he had for me when we joked around. It hit me more than I thought it could. My Guppy left mannerisms and stories that no one could shake. My Guppy was now the man I wish I could talk to every Sunday.

    I was all out of sorts when Guppy passed. I had to ask myself if I was just being dramatic. I was sitting on the plane flying up to Philadelphia, having a casual two-brained conversation while eating some swedish fish:

    “Are you being dramatic Brooks?”

    “No I’m not. I really miss Guppy.”

    “Well you should have took advantage of the time you had spent with him.”

    “I know. Shut up. You are a shitball.” Shitball was a term coined from Guppy. I am a really bad cusser so I usually avoid it, but shitball is just too great and versatile. 

    I continued to have this argument with myself up until my grandpa’s funeral. I remember sitting in the pews next to my sister with my leg anxiously bouncing and pulling my hair. I did not want to stop thinking about him. But the funeral is where everything kind of started and ended. It was a great funeral, which is a weird thing to say. I met a lot of people that were supporting and lead characters in my grandpa’s stories. They were there to celebrate Guppy’s life and not to sit on his death. I had only been to one funeral before then, but this one ended up being the good-hearted laughing and crying kind, as they rightfully should be. My dad gave the eulogy, and I saw him break down when he talked about the conversations he would have with his dad. These conversations meant so much to my dad. He gleaned from Guppy’s wise counsel. My dad saw Guppy as a man who “knew what to say, when to say it, how to deliver it, and how to solve just about any issue with both compassion and accountability.” That sounded like Guppy, but also my dad. I was in the midst of my argument with myself, when I, the two shitballs, looked up and had a synchronized epiphany. My dad was now a grandpa, and I, almost a grown man. My father and I were transitioning into the men we look up to. This put me at ease.  My father is now the man I talk to every Sunday.