Posted in loving memory

 

Posted in loving memory
Passed December 26, 2025

I’ve been trying to find the right words for Bob Kafka — my movement grandfather, my family by choice, and one of the fiercest organizers I’ve ever known. It still feels unreal to write about him in the past tense. Bob wasn’t the kind of person you imagined the world without. He was too loud, too stubborn, too full of life and purpose. But here we are, holding the grief and the gratitude together.

I met Bob through ADAPT, long before I understood what it meant to inherit a movement. He and my dad were outside on break during an organizing training when a woman walked by, saw them sitting together in their wheelchairs, and said, “Isn’t that cute, a father and son hanging out.”

My dad fired back, “Woman, he’s not my dad!”
But the universe had already decided otherwise.

At the next action, my brothers and I claimed him. “Yo Grandpa — you missed X birthdays and Christmases. Fork over the cash!” He didn’t give us a dime, but he laughed, and that laugh was the moment he became Grandpa Bob. And Steph, rolling right beside him, became Grandma Steph. That’s how chosen family works — one joke, one spark, and suddenly you’re bound for life.

Bob didn’t just fight for disabled people. He raised us. He showed us what it looked like to live with unapologetic disabled pride — not quietly, not politely, but fully and joyfully. His wheelchair wasn’t a symbol; it was a tool, a vehicle, a declaration. He moved through the world with purpose, and he taught us to do the same.

One of my favorite memories is the day Bob and Steph visited my school. They came to give a presentation on drunk driving, but afterward, they didn’t just leave. They rolled down the hallway to the Physically Handicapped/Other Health Impaired classroom. They didn’t go as guest speakers. They went as kin. As elders who understood what it meant to grow up disabled in a world that didn’t always see you. As people who knew that showing up in that room mattered.

That moment stayed with me. It told me I wasn’t alone. It told me I came from a lineage — not just a family, but a movement.

Bob’s passing on December 26, 2025, leaves a space in my life that can’t be filled. But it also leaves a legacy that can’t be erased. His impact lives in every organizer he mentored, every action he helped build, every young disabled person who saw him and realized they had a future in this fight.

I carry him with me — in my work, in my stories, in the way I insist on belonging and refuse erasure. He taught me that family is something you build, that resistance is something you inherit, and that none of us roll alone.

Rest in power, Grandpa Bob.
Thank you for claiming me.
Thank you for letting me claim you right back.

Your echo is still here. And it always will be.