Happy 116th birthday to Grandma Ester!

She could sew a set of matching pajamas for her grandchildren (with cellophane-wrapped quarters in the neatly turned besom pockets), roll out crisp sugar cookies so thin you could read through them, make homemade raspberry-apple jelly sealed under paraffin in individually labeled jars, braid a gorgeous—and perfectly symmetrical—rug out of scrap fabric, grow a garden of snapdragons in a spectrum of fascinating colors, and patiently, politely lose endless games of Clue with her matching-pajama-clad grandchildren—usually all in the same day. We had four wonderful, loving grandparents, but our grandfathers died when my sister and I were very young, Grandma Marie lived in Colorado, and Grandma Ester lived only two hours away—and ended up living with us as she started declining late in her long, remarkable life—so I knew her the best. We’ve finally outgrown our besom-pocket pajamas and spent our last cellophane-wrapped quarters, but we now have a fourth generation of her descendants reverently making paper-thin sugar cookies on her well-loved baking sheets.

Throwback Tuesday: Jake and the Dreamettes Edition

Little-known fact: I toured extensively in the '70s backed up by my sassy sister and our groovy grandmothers. My sister eventually got promoted to take my place when we streamlined our look, but we made up for any awkwardness on our farewell reunion tour.

10 things I remember about my Grandma Stigers

1. She made peach preserves in enormous glass jars every year to share with everyone in the family. Each jar had a cinnamon stick in it, which I thought was weird as a kid because cinnamon of course doesn't go with peaches but that never stopped me from piling indulgent amounts of the preserves on everything I could think of.

2. When her daughter--a young mother--lost her husband to cancer, my grandparents renovated their basement to give her and her kids a free, safe place to live so they could care for them until they recovered and got back on their feet.

3. She put up with my dad--who even by his own accounts was a handful and a seeker of trouble and somebody I probably wouldn't have liked if we'd been peers--and turned him into the father I love and respect and look up to today.

4. She loved to sing. Oh, how she loved to sing. Her rich contralto filled her church when she sang hymns and filled her home whenever we gathered around her piano or the gorgeous antique pump organ she had that was never in tune and virtually impossible to play but it never mattered because she was so full of joy from singing.

5. Her hair was so gray that it went beyond silver into the realm of misty purple-blue. And she had a wardrobe of purple clip-on earrings that always matched her hair perfectly.

6. She and my grandfather had a little black mutt named Rags, who was sweet and attentive and docile but always kinda smelled like he needed a bath.

7. She loved to make ceramics for people and she actually had a kiln in her basement. She'd paint and glaze each piece, etch her name and the year on the bottom, and fire up beautiful ornaments and decorations that I'm sure still grace the homes of friends and extended family from coast to coast.

8. She had a dishwasher that rolled around the kitchen and connected to the sink faucet with a hose. This really has nothing to do with her as a person, but when you're a kid and your grandmother has a dishwasher that rolls around the kitchen and connects to the sink faucet with a hose, that makes her pretty darn interesting.

9. She was unfortunately enthusiastic about thumping us kids on the head with her finger or some other small weapon--both as punishment and for her own entertainment. She called herself Granny Great-Thump. We called her Granny Great-Rump.

10. She and my grandfather had an enclosed back porch that ran nearly the entire length of their house, with enough room for a long table and plenty of chairs for feeding a steady parade of family and friends. They even had tiny paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, which I always thought made the place extra-festive.

Grandma died 20 years ago today, after living trapped in the aftermath of a stroke for many months. She lived exponentially farther away from me than my other grandmother when I was a kid, so I didn't see her as often and I never really felt like I knew her. But she influenced my dad to be the kind, loving, decent, respected man he is, and I hope to think he's influenced me to be the same. So she lives on in our hearts and in our family and in yet another generation as my niece and nephew carry on the examples of kindness and love and decency that she lived.

My grandmother made this. In the nursing home. Two decades ago. It's a family heirloom. DO NOT JUDGE.

OK, you can judge. Because how did Grandma get her hands on a beer bottle for her nursing-home craft class? Perhaps the answer to that question is the key to unlocking the mystery of the uneven antlers.

When all that selfie practice finally pays off: Happy Thanksgiving from all us Norwegians!

11/11/11

My grandpa Lawrence Arthur—who joined my grandpa Arthur LeRoy to be the inspiration for my middle name—served in World War I with his three brothers Ole, Gustav and Robert. They build bridges in Russia, built hospitals in France and served stateside when the war ended.

Grandpa Arthur LeRoy was a veterinarian during World War II who was promoted to battlefield surgeon on the front lines in the Philippines and Okinawa.

My dad was in the Army at the very early days of the Vietnam War, serving in Thailand and the Philippines triangulating radio signals to find their broadcast locations. I unfortunately can’t find a photo of him in uniform.

11:00 today—the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month—marks the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, when the Allies signed the armistice with Germany, and the United States 11th Field Artillery Regiment fired the symbolic closing shot of the war.

I can't even begin to describe how much respect and appreciation I have for my veteran forebears, along with all of our country’s active duty and veteran military personnel. Past and present, they live vastly different lives when they're worlds away from us and once they return and live among us as well. The anguish they feel when they're waiting to be deployed. The abject terror they live with every day when they're on the front lines. The thought that the friendships they build can be ripped from them in one explosion, one hail of gunfire, one sunken ship, one innocent step on a land mine. The survivor's guilt when they return home but their friends and comrades-in-arms don't. But all their work, their sacrifices, their days of boredom and nights of fear continue to keep all of us back home safe from what they lived and continue to live with for months and years at a time.

I'm humbled by their selfless sacrifices and their service. I'm proud to have so many veteran relatives and friends to be proud of. And in awe of. And thankful for.

Thank you.

This man named me Jake. Then I totally copied his middle name.

Flashback Friday: Jake and the Dreamettes Edition

Little-known fact: I toured extensively in the '70s backed up by my sassy sister and our groovy grandmothers. My sister eventually got promoted to take my place when we streamlined our look but we made up for any awkwardness on our farewell reunion tour.

Happy birthday to my mom!

Happy 77th birthday to my tirelessly, modestly awesome mom who -- not to make this about me after only ten words -- has made it her personal mission to coordinate doctors, dole out ever-changing (seriously -- they change pretty much every week) prescriptions, endure hours of medically related on-hold music, battle insurance companies, dig deep into online drug-interaction research, and sometimes just pour orange juice and fold laundry for her eternally grateful -- though sometimes exhaustedly unable to show it -- big ol' bipolar son, who undeniably couldn't survive this train ride without her.

When she's not enjoying that little hobby, she's a devoted grandmother to the -- and I swear I'm being empirically objective here -- smartest, awesomeist, above-averageist, talentedist children ever to exchange inappropriate texts with their compulsively corrupting uncle who once again managed to make this tribute about himself. She and my dad are also emotional and moral and eternally inspiring community pillars who waste no time securing donated coats or shoes or furniture or shelter or food or transportation for sometimes complete strangers who desperately need it. In that vein, she also sometimes brings unnecessary butter to my sister's house; buys my dad an ever-expanding library of V-neck sweaters in a gradient palette of dark dad colors; dotingly acquiesces to our relentlessly bellicose cat's increasingly finicky tastes in wet food, blankets and inconvenient places to vomit; and occasionally indulges herself in post-season vests from the Talbots clearance rack. She loves her family unconditionally and we love her unconditionally back, even though she dances with her wrists out and puts onion salt in everything she cooks.

Last summer she weathered major shoulder surgery and months of recovery in a borrowed recliner in the living room with tenacity and courage and grace and humor and mountains of food and organized rides from a lifetime of dear, devoted friends. This year she's a 40-year cancer survivor, and I'm posting this picture from her everyone-had-to-wear-pink 30-year survivor celebration not because we all look young and attractive in it -- but now that you mention it, I guess we do -- but because it radiates the profound joy she brings to her family, her community and everyone she comes in contact with. Except the cat, who demands that her tuna be prepared only with the white sauce from the pink can, which is laboriously difficult to find.

My grandmother braided and stitched these monsters by hand 75 years ago

and they’ve held up insanely well underfoot in multiple rooms in multiple houses in multiple cities since then. But as impressed (and kinda proud) as I am by all of that, they’re about to leave my bedroom and go into storage as part of my Total Mega-Dood Bedroom Makeover.

10 things I remember about my Grandma Marie

1. She made peach preserves in enormous glass jars every year to share with everyone in the family. Each jar had a cinnamon stick in it, which I thought was weird as a kid because cinnamon of course doesn't go with peaches but that never stopped me from piling indulgent amounts of the preserves on everything I could think of.

2. When her daughter -- a young mother -- lost her husband to cancer, my grandparents renovated their basement to give her and her kids a free, safe place to live so they could care for them until they recovered and got back on their feet.

3. She put up with my dad -- who even by his own accounts was a handful and a seeker of trouble and somebody I probably wouldn't have liked if we'd been peers -- and turned him into the father I love and respect and look up to today.

4. She loved to sing. Oh, how she loved to sing. Her rich contralto filled her church when she sang hymns and filled her home whenever we gathered around her piano or the gorgeous antique pump organ she had that was never in tune and virtually impossible to play but it never mattered because she was so full of joy from singing.

5. Her hair was so gray that it went beyond silver into the realm of misty purple-blue. And she had a wardrobe of purple clip-on earrings that always matched her hair perfectly.

6. She and my grandfather had a little black mutt named Rags, who was sweet and attentive and docile but always kinda smelled like he needed a bath.

7. She loved to make ceramics for people and she actually had a kiln in her basement. She'd paint and glaze each piece, etch her name and the year on the bottom, and fire up beautiful ornaments and decorations that I'm sure still grace the homes of friends and extended family from coast to coast.

8. She had a dishwasher that rolled around the kitchen and connected to the sink faucet with a hose. This really has nothing to do with her as a person, but when you're a kid and your grandmother has a dishwasher that rolls around the kitchen and connects to the sink faucet with a hose, that makes her pretty darn interesting.

9. She was unfortunately enthusiastic about thumping us kids on the head with her finger or some other small weapon -- both as punishment and for her own entertainment. She called herself Granny Great-Thump. We called her Granny Great-Rump.

10. She and my grandfather had an enclosed back porch that ran nearly the entire length of their house, with enough room for a long table and plenty of chairs for feeding a steady parade of family and friends. They even had tiny paper lanterns hanging from the ceiling, which I always thought made the place extra-festive.

Grandma died 19 years ago today, after living trapped in the aftermath of a stroke for many months. She lived exponentially farther away from me than my other grandmother when I was a kid, so I didn't see her as often and I never really felt like I knew her. But she influenced my dad to be the kind, loving, decent, respected man he is, and I hope to think he's influenced me to be the same. So she lives on in our hearts and in our family and in yet another generation as my niece and nephew carry on the examples of kindness and love and decency that she lived.

I’m not interested in your petty jealousies

My grandmother made this. In the nursing home. With a beer bottle. Two decades ago. It's a family heirloom. DO NOT JUDGE.

I was so cute! What the hell happened?

It’s so weird that Grandma put a '74 on this ornament when she painted it because I’m 32 years old now so I wasn’t even born until sometime after 2000. Or something. But it’s too late to fix it because she already glazed and kiln-fired it. And now it’s going to confuse my descendants for all eternity.

Life and death

My grandma died 20 years ago today. I hesitate to call her my favorite grandma, but she was definitely the grandparent I was closest to, both geographically and emotionally. Both my grandfathers had died when I was pretty young, and my other grandma (my dad's mom) lived way off in Colorado, and we saw her only once every three or four years. Two of her kids and their families lived near her, so they could take care of her as she got older.

One of the reasons I was so close to the grandma on my mom's side was because she lived only two hours away and was openly involved in our lives ... and she eventually lived right in our house the last few years of her life. My mom was an only child, so there was nobody else to care for this grandma—and there was simply no way we wouldn't take care of her as a family as long as we could before we'd put her in a home.

So before I even started high school, we partitioned off the family room with a huge curtain and moved in a bed for her. (I distinctly remember watching early MTV videos—like "Thriller"—sitting next to her on that bed.) There was a half bathroom on that floor for her to use for sponge baths, and as she got weaker and weaker, Dad and I would carry her up the stairs on a chair every other day so she could use a bathroom with a shower. Other than that, she had everything she needed on one floor ... and a busy social life delivered right to her curtained door.

Since the family room was right off the living room and our house was usually filled with visiting friends, Grandma was always a part of everything that went on in our lives. She'd sit in her housecoat with my friends and me when they came over to study or play games, she joined me every morning at 4:00 as I rubber-banded newspapers in our front hall, and she's smiling in every picture of every party or picnic or cozy night in front of the fire that we had in the early '80s.

As I recall, she got sick enough to move into a hospital only a short while before she died -- and while she was there she had a steady stream of visitors including her personal friends and all the friends of our family who'd gotten to know her.

As you can imagine, these events taught me VOLUMES about compassion and sacrifice and love and the importance of family—all invaluable lessons to imprint on the mind of a young teen-ager. That my parents would arrange their lives around the comfort and security of a sometimes cantankerous, sometimes terrified, sometimes exhausted old lady ... that my grandma would do her best not to be an imposition in our home and in our lives ... that our friends would welcome her with open arms and include her in their social plans ... these are the living examples I remember and try to follow to this day.

Obviously, Grandma's death devastated me. It was the first profound death-related loss in my young life. (So far, the only other deaths of that life-changing magnitude have been the stuff of Greek tragedy: four friends died in a plane crash Easter morning of 1988, another friend was murdered by the bomb that blew Pan Am flight 103 out of the sky over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988, and a family friend's mother was brutally beaten in the basement of the apartment she managed in 1990—and I have never been as pro-death penalty as the day I helped clean up the murder scene.)

But you survive. You move on. You cherish the memories. You carry on the examples. You honor the lives. I was sad when my dad's mom died four years ago, but by then I had a greater understanding of death as a closing chapter in a long story, and I looked at Grandma's death as more of a celebration of her remarkable life.

But sometimes death touches you and leaves nothing.

In the last couple months I've been hit by a steady parade of deaths of people I knew only marginally, if at all. It started in June with the suicide of the young Chicago magazine editor who'd picked me to be profiled in the Top 20 Singles issue. I'd spent a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon with her only a month earlier at my photo shoot, and she was so fun that I left hoping to develop a friendship with her—even going so far as to keep a clever email correspondence going between us.

Two more suicides followed in quick succession: the brother of one of my family's oldest friends (though I'm not sure I'd ever met the guy) and a distant cousin I was only vaguely aware I had (though his mother—a crusty old broad in the best sense of the word—and I always enjoyed an easy rapport whenever we saw each other).

Then, in the last couple weeks, two members of the Chicago Gay Men's Chorus died. The first was a guy I'm sure I'd seen a hundred times in rehearsal, but I didn't recognize his name and I didn't recognize him in our photo directory. Apparently everyone else knew him, though; the email and blog tributes posted in his honor were quite touching. The second was a guy I'd talked to a number of times but never really befriended. I'd always thought he was just quiet, but I'm learning now he was always sick.

And I'm caught in a weird limbo. I'm obviously saddened by the pain that these people suffered and by the pain their deaths brought to their families and friends. But, on reflection, that sadness is mostly academic. I'm sure part of it stems from the fact I had no real emotional connection to any of them. But I worry that I may be becoming jaded. Am I numbed by the bombardment of death in the news and on TV? Have I become self-absorbed to the point that I don't care about other people—even in death? Is it too easy to distance myself from someone I had no real emotional connection to in the first place?

Or—perhaps—my concern over feeling nothing in the face of a loss that isn't even mine to feel is proof that I actually do have the compassion I was taught by my family so long ago when Grandma and I watched videos together from her bed in our family room.