The Original Frank M. McCormack
My grandfather passed away a week ago. He was 93 years old and was married to my grandmother for more than 70 years.
Read that over again for effect. My grandparents were married for a lifetime.
I’m named, in part, after him. I’m Frank Michael, after my dad. My granddad was Frank M. too, but his middle name was Muncher, his mother’s maiden name. Her full name was Annie Estelle Muncher McCormack, but I grew up only knowing her as “Tanmugger.” As I understand it, my dad called her that when he was little, and it stuck. So much so that I was an adult before I ever knew her real name.
Incidentally, I called my granddad “Dendum,” but it never caught on outside our nuclear family. Sweetly, when Jen and I started having kids, my grandparents made a conscious decision to retain “Dendum,” although my grandmother, “Mema” to me, opted for our kids to call her “Gigi.” Everyone else calls them Grandmommy and Granddaddy.
I really only have flashes of memories of Dendum from when I was growing up. Him driving his tractor on an Easter Sunday, pulling a trailer full of hay and children around the farm. He and my dad cutting trees, me swinging an ax with intermittent success. Dendum was hurt badly in a tractor accident up at the farm years ago, and I vaguely remember visiting him in the hospital. What I remember clearly from then is sitting in the den with my mom and dad, and Dad recounting, as best anyone could tell, what had happened, crying at the mention of ants.
As the years marched on and Dendum recovered fully, most of that faded from memory. Time heals, and what I remember most from that chapter are the proverbs he invented in his hospital room.
Like this one:
“You live and learn, but sometimes when you learn, you’ve already lived.”
And this one:
“If no one shuts the door, the door don’t get shut.”
He didn’t always speak in proverbs. Like the time when I decided to scale the wall at the back of the yard at my grandparents’ house near Bryant Denny Stadium. I was probably wearing some Nike or Reebok pumps, which naturally made me want to leap down to the adjacent street. But it was too high for me to get back up and over. Next thing I know, Dendum is peering over the wall at me and asking how, exactly, did I plan to get back over the wall. I honestly can’t remember whether I found a way back over the wall or if he came around and walked with me back to the house.
I miss that house. Looking now on Google Maps, I see the owners have let vines grow up all over the tree. Jen and I sometimes wish we’d bought that house when my grandparents moved.
But “you live and learn,” as they say.
I actually have more memories of Dendum from after he became a great grandfather. Like when he read “The Wheels on the Bus” to Ana (read, not sang). Because nothing sounds more great grandfatherly than the wheels on the bus (speak it to yourself) going “bumpity bump, bumpity bump, bumpity bump.” Or the time my cousin Laurie’s daughter climbed onto his lap and he said, “Why, I believe it’s time for Dinosaur Train.” Or the time he and my grandmother rode down to New Orleans with Dad and Dianne to see Julian when he was first born. He was the first McCormack great grandson (of two, so far).
As my dad drove us to our house, we passed the New Orleans Museum of Art, and I told them how City Park was putting up a new NOMA sign but got the letter spacing wrong. It mistakenly said “New Orleans Museum o fArt.”
That was a joke. I made it up.
In September 2021, Jen gave birth to our third child, a boy we named Eóin (OH-win) Francis. In doing some light genealogical study, I discovered we have more Franks in our ancestry than anyone realized. Besides me, my dad and my granddad, there are multiple Franklins and several ladies named Frances. So it seemed fitting to give Eóin a variation of Frank for his middle name.
I don’t know if it was the name or if it’s because Eóin smiles always, but when Dendum went into the hospital the third week of July 2022, he was always asking about the baby. Dendum went into the hospital because of heart failure, and all indications were that he didn’t have long to live. He eventually moved to a nursing care facility where he could have visitors of all ages, and we were able to go as a whole family two or three times.
The last time we visited was August 2022, when Eóin was still toddling around and handing out kisses and high fives. That was the last time we saw him.
The last time I talked to him was a week later, when we read a little of the 23rd Psalm and I told him two corny jokes. He laughed most at the joke I learned from Julian: Why won’t seagulls fly over a bay? Answer: Because then they’d be bagels.
At his funeral in September that year, I shared with my family one of the most vivid memories I have of Dendum. The time frame: the 90s. The setting: Christmas Day at my Uncle Ronnie and Aunt Nancy's house. The family had gathered in the front room around Dendum, who opened a Bible and read the Christmas story from the Gospel of Luke. I particularly remember him reading about the angel announcing the birth of “‘a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.’ And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.’”
Toward the end, when we’d visit Dendum and I would tell him I’d see him soon, he’d reply, “I’ll either be here or somewhere else.” Well, after his funeral in October 2022 we went to see my grandmother, who was at the same facility he’d been. Dendum, obviously, wasn’t there.
Instead, he, like the shepherds so long ago, has heard the angel chorus and has worshiped at the feet of the Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
