To LIVE: a tribute to the life of John Budnick

I've had the sounds of a keyboard click clacking in my head for days. Writing and re-writing what I would say about my grandfather, Poppop Budnick. Those sounds are coupled with memories flashing in the back of my brain. Events that have stayed with me since I was a child, for one reason or another. Memories that are so pure and magical that it's like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Mountain climbing, berry-picking, honey-gathering...Labor Days, Christmases, we did it all. He lived...in every sense of the word. It didn't come without heartbreak. It didn't come without setbacks. But love, light and rooms filled with laughter healed the heartbreak; faith and perseverance fought the setbacks.

He was the son of immigrants on the hunt for the American Dream as we knew it way back when. He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather. He was a tool-maker by trade. I had no idea what that meant as a child. I knew he had his own company and that he made "stuff like a washable lint roller or a milk carton topper." But as I grew up, I learned that this was someone who was always looking to make something better. Figuring out a solution and if you couldn't find one...make one. Up into his 80's he was working on something in the corner of his basement as "an alternative to fuel," but told me the rest was secret. He never stopped thinking. He never stopped learning.

I got to be there to give him lessons on using the internet. Imagine starting your life with little money and getting an education in a one-room schoolhouse and then in that same lifetime, discovering Google and Sam's Club. Starting out on a farm in rural Pennsylvania, before indoor plumbing and telephones were readily available, joining the army, getting married, building a company from scratch, building a life and a family, building a legacy, discovering MapQuest (this was huge).. and then ending it with having your funeral services live-streamed over the internet for people that loved you, but couldn't be there, still be a part of celebrating your life is something that he'd deem as "Pretty freakin' neat."

But probably the most important truth that Poppop was notorious for was that of Family. "Family is what it's all about, Valerie. Family is most important. Family is what will get you through your darkest days." And would you look at that...he was right. There may be miles and years between us, but we love as one, we laugh as one and we fight for the good as one. It's the most important. He showed us. And we'll carry the torch now.

So, we toast  Poppop to a life well lived, a life well loved and a life that we'll honor and remember with our own families. We'll search the night skies on Christmas Eve for Rudolph 's light and we'll remember that there's always a dirty martini with a twist (or an olive) to be made out of the lemons that life sometimes hands you. And most importantly, we'll remember not what but who life is really all about.

We love you always.