RIP: Paw Paw

My friend of ~25 years just called me to say that his maternal grandmother, who everyone called Paw Paw (sp), died this past weekend of stomach cancer. She was 85 and, until being diagnosed, was still making trips back to China to fight for the land she lost when they fled the Communist Party in 1949. She will be buried next to her husband in Taiwan, where they settled as refugees and where my friend's mom grew up.

My friend and I met in kindergarten and grew up with three houses between us for the better part of the ten years. I ate dinner at his house at least twice a week, with a decent portion of those meals being authentic home-cooked chinese. Paw Paw didn't live there but would stay for weeks at a time, visiting with the family. Whenever I thought I'd had enough to eat, she would shovel food onto my plate with her chopsticks and in her very broken english say "eat, eat!" To this day, I'm convinced she's at least partly responsible for my asian food addiction and why I have to eat chinese food a few times a month. I haven't seen her since high school but the impact of her death in tangible. I give my best wishes to all that loved her.