Sometimes believing in something deeper, is coping

Andrew E. Anka, aka Giddo, was the greatest influence in my life growing up.

LAS VEGAS -- "My favorite person in the whole world!!! Lots of great Memories. Miss him"

"Will never forget you."

"Wonderful man and so many great memories!!! He was like a grandpa to us! Love him."

"Great man."

"I'm proud to be the junior!"

The well-wishes on March 8 were similar to ones in years prior when posting a picture of my grandfather, Andrew E. Anka.

He would have been 102 years old this year. Not that I think he would have ever made it this far.

He barely made it to 74.

On April 6, 1993, my grandfather - affectionately known by many of us as Giddo (pronounced jzid-doe) - was called home.

Easily the greatest influence in my life growing up, and the pulse of where my love for sports began.

Learning to cope without him was tough.

BEST FRIENDS

During the 1970s, Mondays meant spending time in front of an old projection-style big screen, giant pita-bread burgers, and my grandfather telling Howard Cosell to shut-up every so often as we watched Monday Night Football. He would always call me about 3 pm, once I was home from school, ask me who I was rooting for and tell me what time he'd pick me up. If the team I was rooting for was winning - er, covering the point spread - he'd pull out that $200 ticket and promptly hand me my $20 cut.

Funny how he never brought up the losers. He conveniently didn't make it to the old Little Caesars Sports Book on those days.

We were thick as thieves, he and I.

Getting dressed to the nines for dinner shows at Caesars Palace were a treat. Back then, there weren't necessarily residencies or two-night engagements at Strip hotels. Instead, we had two-week stops for headliners, who performed two shows a night. One night during the week the showroom was dark. And if you went to the first performance, it was a dinner show laced with class and elegance, and my grandfather made me every bit a part of it.

He is the reason to this day I'm emphatic about my suits. He taught me at his old house on Palora Avenue the importance of treating your wardrobe with care, and how to hang the pants properly after wearing them, and airing out the jacket before putting it back in the closet.

"Be sure to check every pocket," he used to say. "And wipe down your shoes."

I swear I know where I was standing, and what the room looked like, and can hear his voice.

So many stories, some outlandish for a grandfather and grandson, but man we did some things.

There was the time we followed our tennis lessons at the Tropicana Hotel with a trip inside the showroom for the matinee performance of Bottoms Up, a burlesque revue he had no clue would be topless at high noon. Sure enough, even at 12 pm, the tassels came off the dancers' bizaz. He may or may not have been more embarrassed than me. And if you know my grandfather, all 5-foot-nothing of him, you can see his big, bright eyes and mouth wide open while uttering "Ya haram!" in Arabic.

Poor guy. Truth is, I didn't mind the peep show.

Afterward we went to the coffee shop, and he asked me to pick a number. For whatever reason, I was likened to the number "15." Several times we hit a Keno ticket, and with a pocket full of winnings and an afternoon with Giddo that included my first topless show, he dropped me off at my apartment and told me he'd see me Monday night.

Well, smart ass he turned out to be.

Monday afternoon, awaiting that 3 pm call, instead it was a strange man on the other end of the phone telling me he was chief of security from the Tropicana, wanting to confirm I was in his casino, watching topless dancing girls and hitting keno tickets at the ripe ol' age of about 7, 8, 9 years old. The age, I don't remember.

I was petrified, in tears. I called my mother's work, explained the situation and she turned around and called my grandfather - her father - and filled him in. Boy did he feel bad for having a friend of his disguise himself as the chief of security, scare the shit out of me, and send my mother into a fit of panic-turned-rage in all of about 37 minutes.

I don't think I made it to Monday Night Football that night.

The man felt so bad, he set my grandfather and I up on one of those charter jets for a daily trip to the Grand Canyon. This was to make up for the traumatic experience that ruined my first up-close visual of a Vegas showgirl. Little did any of us know my stomach had other ideas. Payback was bigger that day, as breakfast returned. And my grandfather was left holding the bag - an airsickeness bag.

So many stories, so many good times.

I'll always be thankful he chose me for the second ringside ticket to see Larry Holmes vs. Muhammad Ali. As gut-wrenching as it was to see The Greatest get pummeled that night, my grandfather took me to see a historic event, and I'll always remember that night.

Even after I left Las Vegas from March 1982 through May 1985, I visited as much as possible. Summers, three-day weekends, Spring Breaks - I never didn't want to come back to Las Vegas. I loved the city, but I adored my grandfather.

There weren't many people who didn't adore him, as you can see from the comments above.

When I interviewed Steven Schirripa in December for my January series on Old Vegas, the Sopranos and Blue Bloods actor remembered him vividly. Before he was known on the big screen, Schirripa was a big shot around town. And before he was a big shot, he worked for my grandfather.

"Andy was a good guy; he was a good guy to me," Schirripa said. "I liked him a lot. He was a nice man."

My grandfather commanded his respect without saying a word. And everyone abided by that, whether they were politically connected, involved in the hotel or entertainment business, or members of certain outfit that used to run this town before it was overtaken by, as he always used to tell me, the real criminals who sit on local government boards.

Yeah, he was one of a kind.

Losing him was rough. And coping with the loss was even rougher.

REBIRTH

I was at a time in my life where I was still enjoying the intimacy of Las Vegas, and probably partied a bit more than I should.

At 23, I was enjoying topless dancers up close and personal, not in burlesque revues. Damn you "Bottom's Up." With the lifestyle came hard liquor and cocaine, both part of the norm. We partied recklessly, but didn't necessarily live a reckless lifestyle. In prior years, strippers and coke worked hand in hand, night after night. But I had learned to control the recreational hobby I never let control me as an addiction.

Losing my grandfather certainly was a tempting time to return to the recklessness and to spin out of control.

But roughly two-and-a-half months later, in the strangest manner, over my shoulder and very quickly, I met a young woman. She needed a place to stay and worked with my neighbor. It was only supposed to last until she could get on her feet. Little did either of us knew my neighbor's gesture would change both of our lives.

Shortly after she moved in, my best friend and I brought her out on the town, showed her around Las Vegas since she hadn't seen much of it after moving here from New York, and we hit it off immediately. Less than two weeks later she moved her stuff into my place, and it wasn't much longer we left what was quickly becoming a dilapidated apartment complex into a nicer condominium.

Kristin was young, but she was smart. And she knew how to make a home. She didn't make me forget about my grandfather, but she did make me forget about the grief and reinspired me to make something of myself, somewhat in the same manner he did. She pushed me, and supported me, and believed in me as I started to grow my journalism career.

Coping with my grandfather's loss transitioned because I was able to eventually leave any sort of recklessness behind, while embracing and remembering the good times without grief. I had moved on from the grieving process. I was able to share his legacy with Kristin and spoke highly of him to those who didn't know him, while sharing laughs with my close friends who learned to call him Giddo.

In 1995, Kristin became pregnant, and I knew with immediacy we were going to raise a son. I didn't need her to get a test around 20 weeks, I knew in my soul she would give birth to a boy. My friends used to tell me all the time, when I was 18 taking care of their kids for them, that I was going to have a son one day.

If only my grandfather were here to see this. He would have loved to be a great-grandfather and would have made a fantastic one.

We moved from the condo we rented and bought a home in old Henderson. My stepfather painted the room blue, and Kristin had it decorated perfectly. Me, I was getting the outfits picked out to match the shoes and showed them off to anyone who came by the house. My son was two months shy from coming out the womb, and I was showing off baby Nikes and matching sweatsuits.

Three years after my grandfather left, I truly believe he returned on Jan. 13, 1996 as my son, Jordin.

I don't wear my faith on my sleeve, I don't necessarily go around preaching about afterlife or reincarnation. But there are two I believe in wholeheartedly.

My grandmother I never met - my Giddo's first wife - died on Mother's Day, May 11, 1961. I was born on Mother's Day, May 11, 1969. If part of my mother's coping mechanism in losing her mother as a young girl is believing she returned as me, I'm with it.

I also believe my grandfather passed in April 1993, somehow sent Kristin in my direction a few months later and we were able to help one another in a difficult situation, and two and a half years later she had my son. On the week of his first birthday, in 1997, our relationship ended, but the relationship with my son was about to flourish.

I've always said I was a 17-year reigning single father of the year. I've also said Kristin and I could write a book on co-parenting the right way. And Jordin has been my coping mechanism since he was born, as his presence always kept me focused.

I've told that story many a time, but from a different angle. More so on the reincarnation part.

But further context reveals that having my son helped keep me from the reckless lifestyle that was headed for destruction had I not met Kristin. And to be honest, looking back, destructive is a tame word.

I can't tell anyone how to cope, and I'm no expert. But what I can say is we all grieve differently, and we all find peace in different areas of our lives. We find mechanisms that help us believe everything will be okay, and ways to apply said mechanisms to our grieving process. And that's what we have to cling to, without anyone's approval.

The memory of Giddo will always be in my mind.

But it's his presence in my own son that helps me cope, while reminding me daily he'll always be by my side.