In Memory of Francis Gritzmacher

I was sitting here looking for the paperwork that the surrogate court sent me to finalize Frank's estate. This has dragged on much longer than it should have due to the COVID-19 shutdown of the court. I picked up a packet of papers to fill out just before they went into shutdown. And I've been waiting ever since. When they got to the point where they answered the phone, they told me to mail the completed papers in. I did that and waited a month without any response. I called back and after a few episodes of phone tag, talked to someone. They had not seen the papers, but would look for them and get back to me. I never heard back. As things are starting to open back up a bit, I'm hoping I can get some movement on it. But, if the worst happened and they lost the papers, I was looking back through my records to see if I could resubmit the claim. I scanned everything in and can resubmit it all, except some things will need to be notarized again. No loss, just a giant PITA.

But as I was looking through the files, I came across a file that I had kept from Frank. It was on his laptop and seemed to be something he had been working on near the end. Pretty standard existential musings, but interesting and just SO Frank. I thought I'd share it here.

YOU

One thing that has really grasped me recently is the concept of you. Me. Who am I? What am I? Physically, mentally and metaphysically, what makes me, me? And I hope that my thoughts on this is something that enlightened and intrigues you as well. At least, I hope it makes you think a bit differently.

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If you think about it, Frank left us in the nick of time. Right at the start of all the pandemic stuff. Not just that if he caught COVID-19, it would have been the end, but if he hadn't, he would have been forced into quarantine and isolated. No more visits from friends. He really loved his visitors and having company made things bearable for him. Just another random thought from my isolation...

Well, we are in July and it feels no closer to getting out of this pandemic lockdown. It feels like we're stuck in time. Progress has been tough in fighting the COVID-19 outbreak and every time we make inroads here in NY, it seems like the rest of the country undoes it all. I was beginning to feel optimistic that we might be clear to get together by late summer or fall, but now with travel bans in place for people traveling from other states, it looks like the best hope is a vaccine, whenever that comes.
So I just wanted to put something up here to show some kind of activity and keep everyone aware that even if nothing is going on, it's not because we've forgotten.
Everyone be safe. Practice social distancing when appropriate. Wear your masks, please... Get out and get some fresh air and sunshine when you can and stay so we can all get through this. I know it's been tough for me to do, but I'm going to try to keep healthy in the meanwhile. You're all Frank's family, which makes us family, so take care and we can all get together to celebrate his time with us someday soon.

As time goes on in this Coronavirus world, it looks like it may be some time before we can safely hold a memorial celebration. New York has been doing a reasonable job of managing the pandemic, but other areas don't seem to be. And COVIDIOTS everywhere seem determined to throw our sacrifices out the window and plunge us into a second wave of the epidemic.

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