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My Grampy, my mother’s father, passed away this week.

He was the last of my living grandparents. He died the way every human being dreams of dying. After a full and beautiful life, peacefully, in one’s sleep. Without suffering or sickness. Without tragedy or drama. But quietly, simply, tranquilly.

He was living with my uncle, with his youngest grandchildren in the house next door. He had grown weaker over the years, both physically and mentally. And while I was not surprised to receive the call from my mother, the world feels different today knowing that a generation of my family is gone. That today my mother must now exist in the world without either of her parents. I don’t care how old you are, or how old your parents are, that is a life-altering reality to confront.

I keep thinking about this trip my mother and I took to visit him in North Carolina a year after I graduated from college. It’s the house I remember from my childhood, where he and my Grammy lived out their retirement. My Grammy died too young (fuck cancer) at the start of my freshmen year of college. My Grampy continued to live in their home in Chapel Hill until his memory clouded and short term events got spottier and spottier and he made the move to Kansas to live with my uncle.

But this trip that my mom and I took to visit him was before all of that, and it is one of my fondest, happiest memories with my grandfather. It’s when I was introduced to manchego cheese and marcona almonds. It’s when I had the time and maturity to listen to him talk about his life as a diplomat and life during WWII. It’s when I learned the genius of a post-dinner cheese plate. It’s when I sorted through photos and magazines and notes and balls of yarn and old letters and costume jewelry and unfinished embroidery projects, and pieced together bits of my grandparents that I’d never had the opportunity to understand. That trip gave me a glimpse of my family’s history, of who I am and where I come from, and when I think of my Grampy today, that is what I will remember. Sitting by his side in his living room, NPR blaring around us, with ephemera from a lifetime of love and family at my feet.

That and him dancing like a total rock star at my wedding three years later.

Today I am grateful that my daughter, Sunny, has a father from Ohio named James to look up to, just as my mother, Sunny, had my Ohio raised Grampy, James Freeman.

Here’s to you, Gramps, with love always from your Asher-Dukes.