I remember the day you passed. October 15th, 2012. It was a Monday. My mom’s birthday. I was snoozing through alarms, lazy to get up for school. Creaks on the staircase. “You should come upstairs. Grandpa’s not doing great,” dad says and I stay in bed a few extra minutes, bracing for something I hoped would never come. Finally on the main floor of my house and I hear my mom cry. “No!” she yells. It was something straight from a dramatic movie or television show. I get upstairs to the second floor, but that’s all I’m able to do. My legs start shaking and I feel like I’m going to be sick. Attention turns to me because I cannot hold myself up and I cannot see a thing and I cannot hear a thing because all I can think about is that this is all a dream. I make myself sick for the week that follows. I don’t leave the couch which becomes my new bed–the living room my new bedroom for at least a month that follows. I knew in the moment I heard my mom yell into the phone in the bathroom that morning that part of me was gone. The biggest part. And everyday I come to accept that I will never get that part back and I will never be the same. Changed forever by all the love before that day and all the days that follow after that day.
I want to write about you all the time and also never at all. The challenge comes from not only the hurt that surfaces, but also the lack of things to say. Not that you didn’t provide a number of stories to retell or an endless amount of love that I can share. There are just no words good enough for all the love I have for you in my heart. I tell everyone that the capitol of Bulgaria is named after your family anytime Bulgaria is brought up in a conversation (which is not very often, but sometimes I’ll bring it up anyway). We joke all the time about your dad naming you Pasquale. My mom never believed that story until she found your birth certificate and realized it was true. You were such an elaborate story teller and now I wonder if they were all stories from your life. Stories from your past that I will never be able to ask you about. It’s only now that you’re gone that I wish I had asked you more questions and listened to more stories. I knew you for 21 years and yet I feel like I didn’t know you enough.
A lot of the time I spend writing about you, I come to a long winded sentiment hoping that you are proud of everything I’m doing and everything I’m becoming. I wish there was a universally accepted sign from people who have left us that lets us all know that we’re doing ok–that we’re doing enough. I often feel like I’m letting you down. That I should be doing more of what I love and less of what I need to be doing. I imagine you thinking I don’t play the piano enough or write enough, but so often it reminds me of you and then I am back here wondering what I could be doing to make you proud of me. To make me half the human that you were.
It feels odd, now, visiting your house or calling grandma on the phone. And I feel like a really terrible person and granddaughter because I think deep down in my heart, I loved you more. More than everyone, to be honest, and so nothing feels quite right about a lot of things. The house is not the same, the conversation is not the same, the longing to return is not the same. You are my light and without you here everything seems lackluster.
Some days, it feels like we’ve been apart for a day. And others it feels like we’ve been apart 20 years. I can still hear your voice in my head, see your face when I close my eyes. Your scent lingers in the air and I wish for one more day it could all be real again. I love you and I miss you with my entire being, grandpa.
some serious stuff 