Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Death in the Family, Part II (current)

It's been over a month since my father-in-law passed away. The initial rush of it all seemed to go rather smoothly for us all and it seems like we all got back into day-to-day living pretty quickly.

Every time we see my mother-in-law, she is shedding more of Phil's things our way. We were touched to go through the contents of his wallet: photos of his kids, notes to himself, and a worn piece of paper with "I PHIL GRAYSON LEAVE ALL MY WORDLY POSSESSIONS TO MY WIFE, JANE." It was dated the year 1968. My father-in-law was unsentimental and whenever possible deflected conversation to his facts on Hollywood history, his latest political obsession, or various tidbits from what he had been reading. On occasion he talked about the old days in Torronto and he had a regular schtick of sound bites from being in San Francisco in the 1960s. Mostly, he had the same menu of things to quip and he repeated them. A lot.

So the contents of the wallet was touching to us. No money. Just pieces of what he really cared about.

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The other day, David received an email from a perspective agent interested in Phil's scripts. This made David tear up.

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Another box of items from Phil revealed silent photos of him with his first wife along with the paperwork where they legally changed their last names to Grayson from Bloomberg. We always knew he changed his name but did not know he did it with his ex wife. Mysterious.

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