On a recent visit to the Chicago Writers Museum, I conceived the idea of giving my eldest grandson the gift of a lifetime—something small, forever to keep.
An exhibit featured brief short stories by named authors including Sibylla Nash. I pressed a button on an upright mechanism, similar to an electronic ticket machine. It spooled out a slender, two-foot-long paper containing all of her tale, The Big BOO!
No charge.
Ten-year-old X is a voracious reader, and the story suited him, but it wasn’t the yarn that made it a distinctive present. My handwritten note beside the title on the narrow page offered this:
For X from Grandpa. To be read to your brother Z, your children, and your grandchildren!
Yes, I was thinking ahead, but looking back, as well.
My own grandfather was on my mind when I inscribed this request to a boy I love. Leo Fabian was an imperfect yet loving man whom I last saw when I was a teenager. Mom and I went to the hospital, knowing the dreadful speed of his life’s clock and the shortness of his time.
Grandpa sat upright in his bed, watching TV, but his still blankness suggested a man defeated, the loser in the battle with Death, a larger than Life opponent with an undefeated record.
An artist would have needed only one color to paint Leo Fabian’s likeness that day—a gray man of gray hair and skin, with a face robbed of expression.
My mother entered first, but when I appeared a few steps behind her, his face came to life. He held out his arms and we hugged each other. One of those indelible memories you relive but for the touch. The touch you want more than anything.
I own faded photos of him, but I don’t have any videos or recordings of his voice. In their absence, it will be harder to tell my grandchildren what made him important to me.
No one else is left to do it, as my brothers were too young to know him well.
My grandad and I worked in proximity to each other at my uncle’s business during the days I had an after-school job. This son of Romania crossed the Atlantic to come to our promising land. He spoke several languages, and I listened to him use them. I recognized the charm, wit, and joy he carried and carried him through much of his life.
And I knew he loved me.
On occasion, he used the phrase “kick the bucket” well before he was inches away from the metaphor turning real. An event now long past.
Leo Fabian would be proud and happy that I think of him and pleased with this quiet honor. Writing his name, bringing it to life, and saying it out loud for nothing more than his remembered love. Such is part of a Jewish custom.
I wish the world permitted me to reach back in time and show you how he walked, spoke, and joked. His animated smile would have taken you in, with its sense of mischief, and the scent of the aftershave he applied to his cheeks. The twinkle in his eye, his imposing height, the width of his wrists, and the strength in his hands all said this was a man.
Not the bad stuff in his life, just the best in him.
The record of my life is more comprehensive than my grandfather’s, yet whatever is told or shown of it, whenever I am gone, at the end, love is what matters.
James Lucas wrote this in a Substack essay on September 11, 2025:
So many of us drift through life as if wrapped in a fog, caught in the monotony of routine, numbed by a rhythm that feels imposed rather than chosen. We move like sleepwalkers, bound by the weight of what we think we should be doing.
And yet, it’s only when we truly grasp that our time is slipping away that the most beautiful part of us rises to the surface. Perhaps it’s because, when everything is stripped down to its essence, the noise disappears… and the thing that remains is love.
Love as the purest truth of who we are. Love is the only weapon we’ve been given against the cruelty of life.
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The painting is titled “Old Man and Grandson” by Ghirlandaio. The cropped section shown here was done by Frank Vincentz and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.
It is followed by a photo titled “Hand of Grandpa and Grandson” by Nikhil More. The source is the same.
