This probably is the last entry until after we return from Ft. Lauderdale. We are bringing the laptop, but that does not mean we will be able to get online or access Sue's favorite sites.

We are leaving tomorrow when ever I get everything together enough to actually leave. The first order of the day to get a loan from the bank to make sure we can survive this trip financially. Luckily they said yes and I need only take a title to one of the vehicles to secure it for them. So much left to pull together, but I will get it all done.

I made a list so that I wouldn't forget the important things. Fran's ring being the most important one of all. That's a story for another day though. Hoping that Fran understands the love that has gone into the creation of the ring we are giving her from Marty. Hoping she understands that we don't give a rat's behind about the money it may be worth. Hoping she knows that this is about his love for her and the deep heartfelt desire we have to honor that love with this ring. This final gift to her from him. Hoping she knows that even though he is gone from us all that she is still Grandma Fran forever to us. She is still a member of this family forever.

Showing a great man, love, honor and respect. Remembering all that he was. The little boy that never really rode a bicycle but once and failed miserably that one time. Who was really a geek. I love that geekiness by the way. One of the endearing things about him.

There's a picture of Marty standing with a group of people who look like your average office workers from the mid-70s. They are standing around some sort of collating machine. Marty told me that the reason he is in the picture is because they needed an executive looking person for the picture and grabbed him and shoved him in the picture.  He thought that was a hoot. There's another picture of him as a small boy standing there with that same grin, looking directly into the camera. He told me that was taken somewhere out in the country. Somebody's farm or something. Some relative, his family going there in the summer time when he was a child.

When he was an older boy and all through his teen years, he ran dentures for his father. His dad made dentures and it was Marty's job to deliver the finished product back to the dentist's offices there in Brooklyn. He was proud that his dad trusted him with that job. He however, never wanted to become a denture maker himself.

We had one real musical genre in common. Dixieland Jazz. Sue says I get to inherit his collection. I told her I might love Dixieland Jazz, but not as much as Marty did. Not enough to want to inherit his collection.

Marty was a quiet guy at home. He read a lot. I get to pick and chose from his collection all that we will not donate to charity.

We have videos of Marty with K in the pool at our home in Umatilla. We have videos of Marty rocking K in her rocker singing a little ditty to her. It will be hard watching those videos again. K as a baby, smiling up at Grandpa as he played with her, never knowing that if not for him she would not exist. Remember that trip to Arkansas for Sue to meet me? He did that. He made Sue's move from New York possible too. Kaitlyn would not be alive as the Kaitlyn we know today if not for her grandfather. Someday she will comprehend all he did for her. Someday when she is a grown up and understands life better.

Sue called Marty Poppy when she was a child. Poppy used to go off on business trips all the time. He would always bring her something special home. She love her Poppy and he loved her. Daddy's little girl. His most precious child.

Sue was adopted. A few years after Evie died, Marty helped her search for her birth parents, a way to help her understand herself better. After she found them and over the years, as she got to know them better, she thanked Marty over and over again, profusely, for having saved her from them. If you knew them, you would know why she thanks Mom and Dad for saving her from them. Let me put it this way, Marty and Evie gave her a life 10,000 times better than the one she would have experienced had she grown up with her birth family.

I have to find sleep now. I have to sleep as late as I can so that I can drive for as long as possible tomorrow.

Goodnight Poppy, I love you.....