I got the call early this morning from my Dad that my Grandpa, James Russell Johnstone (1918-2007), passed away in the wee hours of the morning... around 4 a.m. He came down with pneumonia about a week and a half ago, and his weakened body simply couldn't fight it any longer. My Mom and my Aunts were with him, but everyone had fallen asleep. My Mom woke up at 4 a.m. and noticed that the oxygen machine was still going, but she couldn't hear my Grandpa breathing anymore. I'm just glad that he had all three of his girls with him. And I'm glad that he can be with my Grandma again now, as they were virtually inseparable and I think the months since her passing were incredibly difficult for him.

So I'm at peace. I was able to have a fantastic visit with him over my birthday weekend several weeks ago, and I spoke to him almost every day on the phone while he was in the hospital, most recently on Tuesday evening when he had a room full of visitors. We were both joking on the phone: me - that I was upset that I hadn't been invited to the party in his room; he - that he was going to beat me at cards next time he saw me. At the end of the conversation, he told me to take good care of myself and that he loved me. I have to wonder, in retrospect, if he knew he was going to be too weak to talk on the phone again after that.

My Grandpa was a wickedly funny guy. You could always count on him to make you laugh. I'll miss the long-running contest he and I had going for years and years with the card game, Snap. We'd play whenever we saw each other, and between "championship games," we'd trash talk or call in our bragging rights, depending on who had won most recently. I even took playing cards with me to the hospital when I went to see him a few weeks ago, but he wasn't up to playing then. I held them up so he could see them and said, "Just in case you want to play a quick game..."

And I realized earlier today that if he saw me now, he'd say something like, "Ah, Kris, don't cry for me. It's ok. I'm fine and dandy now." So I'm trying not to. But that's easier said than done.

Still have all of the things that go along with it -- the wake and the funeral -- and even though it's under such circumstances, I'm still excited to be seeing my family.

So I'll close this post with a picture of my Grandpa, taken (I believe) in the Philippines when he was stationed there during World War II. In this photo, he could be the twin of my cousin, Mark. Good looking fellow, wasn't he?

I miss you already, Grandpa, and I love you. And you are the reigning Snap Champion of the Universe. You get to keep the title, since you won it fair and square back in June.