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Another RIP post, one of far too many lately, but there's no particular reason you should know this one. He was my paternal grandfather, and he wasn't terribly well at the end (to the point of having a DNR order in his notes), but while it wasn't really surprising, it's still not ... ok. How can it be?
It's due to him that my family has it's name. As my paternal grandfather, and using standard English name inheritance, that's the way it works. Still, it's not quite true. When he and his Merchant-Navy crewmates left port for the last time in nineteen-forty-something, he was named Fernand Schneider ("Schned-airrr"). While they were at sea, German forces captured their home port, and they eventually put in at an English port, where they joined the war effort. Given that his (French/Belgian) name was spelled the same way as a popular German name (Schneider: "Schneye-der"), and there was a war on and all, he decided to change it and, looking out the window, noted it was a lovely summer's day. That, as they say, is all she wrote, and that's the story. The truth is probably pretty similar.
I didn't see him very often, and I didn't know him very well. Nonetheless, I'm sad he's gone.