Gerald Grant Woodward

I found out yesterday that my uncle died. He was living in a nursing home in California but had spent the last few months of his life in hospice care. My uncle Jerry married my mother's sister when I was a very small girl yet he fit right into the fold like he had always been there. I remember the first time I met him. He picked me up by my ankles and taunted me as I laughed and begged to be put down. He asked me "what's the matter? Don't you walk this way? Walk on your hands? Walking on feet is so boring!" In my late teens Uncle Jerry was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. It changed him and in the end he suffered a great deal. He was such an interesting man. He was raised by his homosexual older brother, colorblind, owned stock and regularly checked it, loved cuckoo clocks and collected them from all over the globe, taught me to play poker and was insanely in love with my aunt. I will miss him a great deal but I am glad his suffering is over. I am sure he is out of his wheelchair now in heaven dancing with my Aunt Becky who died a few years ahead of him. The fact that they are together again is a very comforting thought to me.