My Grandpa Joe has led a very interesting life.  Josef Lowe was born in Belfast, Ireland on January 11, 1911.  He had a very simple life growing up.  That was until, at age 16, he was shanghaied and forced to work aboard Il Cercatore del Dannato; the ancient pirate ship that has terrorized the seven seas since it was launched in the late 1300s.  He served as cabin boy for the dreaded pirate Enma Ou until, Enma Ou was killed while looting a japanese warship.  Joe was only nineteen years old but he took the place of Enma Ou as captian of Il Cercatore del Dannato.  He sailed as Il Cercatore del Dannato as Enma Ou for six years until he was captured by a german reconnaissance troupe in 1936.  Grandpa had a reputation at this time as a great explorer of the areas the world had forgotten.  Hitler had heard about this and wanted to have him lead expeditions to find objects with “unique” properties.  While crawling through the neglected crevices of wonder and awe, he fell in love with an adventurous archaeologist from Venezuela.  Her name was Lola Solero and she was in a situation similar to the one Joe was in.  After a few years, they were married and she had a son, Rico. (my dad) This cheerful event soon became bittersweet when it was found that Lola and Rico could be used as leverage against Joe.  Grandma and dad spent the next five years playing company to the wives and children of the most powerful men in the axis powers and only seeing grandpa on special occasions.  When the war ended, Joe took Lola and Rico and moved to Venezuela. (grandma’s idea) There, he became a world-renowned guide, leading groups of people, with serious thrill-seeking issues, all over South America.  When my father turned 18, he decided to move to the United States and study law.  In college, he met and fell for an aspiring lawyer from Chicago. (mom) They were married, moved to Chicago, and, you guessed it, had a baby. (me) When they weren’t taking care of me, they were leading the way in the battle against Chicago’s corruption and organized crime.  They made many friends and even more enemies in that line of work.  Then one night, on their way home from a dinner with the mayor, they were pulled over and gunned down by a crooked police officer.  I was only six at the time.  Grandpa and grandma immediately took me in and the three of us moved to India.  I was then placed in a private school where I was taught in Hindi and English.  Joe still worked as a guide, going as far as Siberia for those who were willing and had the money.  He would sometimes be gone for over a month at a time.  I had terrible insomnia and to help, grandma would tell me fantastic bedtime stories of the adventures she and grandpa had.  Grandpa would also come home and tell of the amazing quests that he would lead his clients on.  Grandpa’s bedtime stories became my favorite part of the day.  I loved to sit and listen to tales of mystical objects in Farr away places.  As I got older I started to think grandpa and grandma were exaggerating a bit in these stories but I still enjoyed listening to them.  After graduation, I moved back to the states to pursue an engineering degree at Iowa State University.  But even after I was gone, grandma and grandpa would send letters detailing escapades, some from the past and some freshly finished.  These letters still contained the far-fetched places and people of my youth, I attributed it to grandma and grandpa being bored without me, but I still loved to read them.  Four years later, grandma died of a mysterious disease while with grandpa on one of their famous expeditions.  This was a devastating blow to the both of us.  Joe even bought a large plot of land in Montana and had a house built there.  I think he wanted to move closer to the only family he still had.  I had always meant to visit him but, strangely, he was never there.  He said that he became a big-game hunter and spent a lot of time in Africa, Asia, and Antarctica. (I will explain that on a later date) But, although grandma was gone, the letters never stopped coming and they still filled with astounding tales of outrageous hunts and deadly beasts.  Now I was beginning to think that senility may have been setting in on old Joe but the letters gave me comfort that he was still alive and , eventually, I started reading them to my children.  These letters kept coming and coming for years and years.  I wouldn’t have believed it was still Grandpa Joe writing the letters except I saw him every year at Christmas.  I loved and looked forward to seeing him every year but I was always a bit uneasy about how young he looked; even these last few years.  He was a man, well into his nineties, who looked like he could have been and older brother of mine.  He looked almost exactly the same as the day he came to pick me up after my parents died.  Then, this Christmas, he stayed.  He rented an old house near mine and paid the entire year’s rent in cash up front.  I am 46 years old, I earned that engineering degree, met a beautiful woman, settled down, had kids who were on their way to starting lives of their own; it was nice to have Joe around.  Everything was great until about three weeks ago.  Grandpa’s birthday was fast approaching and, for those of you not good with numbers, he was turning 100.  He seemed to be unnerved about something and it became more and more apparent as the 11th drew closer.  He made me promise not to have a party, and he said that only I should come see him on the night before his birthday.  I agreed and that night, I went alone to visit him.  I opened the door to his house and all I could do was stand, mouth agape, frozen in shock.  A shriveled old man sat at the table before me.  His hair was gone, most of his teeth too, and his pale skin hung loosely from his tiny fragile frame.  I was only able to recognize him by his eyes; those piercing eyes were now sunk deep into the voids of a worn and wrinkled face.  It appeared as though all 100 years of his life had been etched into his body over the last 24 hours.  What was left of Grandpa Joe looked up at me and said, “RJ, sit down, there’s something I need to tell you.  I will not live to see tomorrow.”