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Saint Andrew

My Uncle Andy was a good man, a "moral man," my mother said of her younger brother, who died last week. He was on the couch taking a nap in his Miami Lakes home and my Aunt Lucille went over to wake him up and his eyes were only half closed and she said, "Stop fooling around—you're scaring me!" He was a great kidder, with a unique sense of humor, but this wasn't funny. She touched him and he was cold: Andy was gone.

My uncle, Andrew J. Geranis, was a complex man. At least, I think so. I said that he was a kidder and I know this because during the mid-point of my college studies I went to work with him for a while in his General Contracting business. I stayed with him and Lucille in their south Miami house, which had an enclosed swimming pool right beside the back patio. One day he said to look at the bottom of the pool (I don't remember what I was supposed to look at) and as I did, he pushed me in, clothes and all. I think it took two days for my shoes and wallet to dry out. He thought it was funny; I think I sulked for a day or so.

He was born with a first name and a last name, but no middle name. Under normal cultural circumstances, he would have received a middle name upon baptism, but he refused to be baptized and later decided to take my grandfather's first name as his middle name. So he became Andrew John Geranis. He spent most of his life going back and forth between agnostic and atheist, and yet he gave substantial sums of money to the Greek Orthodox Church in Miami—so much, in fact, that the church renamed itself Saint Andrew Greek Orthodox Church. It's not clear whether the Saint was my Uncle Andy or the younger brother of Saint Peter, but the gesture is significant nonetheless. He liked being generous, and he used a tactic that I have since stolen. When he would go out to eat with other people, he would make sure that he paid the server after the meal but before the check ever made its way to the table.

He and Lucille never had children, but they kept an immortal dog, a salt-and-pepper Schnauzer named Ashes. Here's how the immortality part worked: When Ashes died, they would go to the kennel and buy another similarly-colored Schnauzer and name it Ashes—like Doctor Who, except that Ashes always looked like Ashes, and still does. Besides the immortal terrier, they also loved horses. He and Lucille raised thoroughbreds and traveled around the country racing them. Several were champions.

As a "moral man," my Uncle Andy was loved by many, and many of those were in attendance at his wake and his funeral last Friday. Before his burial at Vista Memorial Gardens, several of his friends spoke their memorials. We should all have such things told about us when we die. One couldn't speak and instead played a musical rendition of the Lord's Prayer on his harmonica. The funeral service itself was short. At least, I think so. It was too short, like his life.