Till Death Do Us Apart

Grief comes in many forms. It doesn’t happen according to plan or schedule. Sometimes, it hits you right in the gut when you least expect it.

I lost my grandpa last year. It was an ordinary day when my mother called me. We weren’t close except for the childhood visits and, later on, the awkward conversations once a year during the holidays.

In my memory, grandpa wasn’t a person of many words. He was always the one in the kitchen, busy making food or fixing things. He was a veteran who fought in the war, but he never talked about it. Not even once. He was just an ordinary, genuine person, always with a big smile on his face, telling us about the fish in the market or the food he was making for dinner.

We lost him to cancer, I think. Or maybe it was broken bones? The two incidents were so close in the timeline.

I spent most of my adult life living in a different continent away from everyone I’m related to except my daughter. My life went on the same way as it always did after grandpa has passed. Grief didn’t hit me at all until the morning when I was chatting on the phone with a woman who lost her brother, who used to be a musician.

I asked her if she had dreams, and she told me never, which she felt very guilty about.

I felt weird for not sharing a loss of my own, so I told her about grandpa and that my mom had a dream about him the night he passed, but he has never shown up in mine.

Then it hit me right at that moment in the middle of a parking lane. For all these times I’ve been telling myself we simply didn’t have any business together, it suddenly seemed so pale.

But I would have told you a different story if he was alive.

My grandparents from my father’s side migrated to the north from the deep south after the war. My grandma worked at a bank while grandpa stayed home for the kids. Grandma was a people person, but she never figured out the way with me. She would always be fixing my hair, patting me way too hard on the back, or giving me a bunch of traditional, cultural stuff I would never ever wear in the modern world. Still, secretly, I have always been fascinated with those beautiful, sophisticated decorations and pieces of jewelry from our southern, indigenous roots, which later extended to my interest in world music and non-western cultures.

Grandpa was the one who made amazing spicy, southern food, which also involved my early memory of crying my eyes off due to eating a killer chili from the fish soup. There was the smell of Vicks when he accidentally pulled my arm off. He rubbed it a little and popped my arm right on. Now that it came to mind, he might have been a doctor in the war.

Grandpa used to pick me up from elementary school in the winter, riding a bike in the snow. He would always bring me a brisket or something meaty, but when it comes to memories, I will never forget the one time he took a sudden turn and threw both of us to the ground.

Despite a series of misfortunes, they were the most hospitable people I’ve known who served the best food in the world, but we have lost each other in time due to my own stubbornness and stupidity, under false impressions and unfortunate coincidences.

I grew up in my grandparent’s house on my mother’s side. They were math teachers and science professors in a university. My grandpa on my mother’s side is a northern, storyteller version of the one from my father’s side. Unlike him, my northern grandpa would never make delicious food spicy, nor would he miss a chance to tell stories about the war after dinner, although he was never in it. We bonded naturally over our love for stories and food.

On my mother’s side, Grandma is a highly intelligent, chatty little person who always enjoys gossips and opinionated discussions. She engages me in conversations with a soft edge, making it hard not to enjoy her company. On the other hand, my mother would tell you a completely different story about her as my grandma/her mother always has a negative opinion about everything and everyone.

Ever since I was little, I have been under the impression that my grandparents on my father’s side didn’t love me enough to be in my life, in addition to the lack of attempt on my father’s part and the hovering misfortune above our heads. Fleeing holiday sessions to avoid them was my main source of motivation to move away, among others.

Deep down inside, I’ve always known that they’ve tried their best to have me in their lives, maybe a little bit too much that it ended most of the time badly, but for as long as I knew myself in the past, I stuck to the bad impressions and disregarded the truth, turning my head away like a big baby.

Yet, I dedicated my entire adulthood going down south, tracing a good time that could have been.