My Eighteenth Year – 1972-1973 – A Year of Highs and Lows and Auf gets Lëtzebuergesch

Soon after I turned 17 in October 1972, Buck (my grandfather married to Nana) was diagnosed with cancer and was hospitalized in November. He was in the hospital for several weeks and died four days after Christmas. Buck is my best example of why family is not based on sharing genetic material. I have none of his DNA but always felt closer to him than my biological maternal grandfather.  Buck married Nana (my mother’s mother) after her divorce from Cecil Broski, her first husband. There’s a great story about their marriage in the fourth and fifth paragraphs of this post. How Nana and Buck Married

Buck was a good man and he and Nana had the kind of love that I admire. They respected each other. I will always remember Nana telling me later that even when she came in from working in the garden and her hair was a mess and she felt unattractive, Buck would put his arms around her and tell her she was beautiful. And because of that, she felt beautiful.

Even though we’d all had time (two months) to prepare for it – it was a shock to realize that Buck was dead. I was trying to be stoic, but when I saw Nana cry at his funeral – I completely fell apart. There was such raw anguish in her sobs – a sound I had never heard before. I remember that our close family friend, Mrs. Brennan, consoled me. It was probably the first and only time in my life or hers that Nana couldn’t do that for me.