I’m nine, running around the yard in circles, chasing my invisible friend. I was busy accomplishing my goal, and I don’t notice my family gathering around to watch my amusing face. I giggled and laughed, fell on the soft luscious grass, stood back up, then I stumble again. I didn’t realize how sick my grandpa was going to get. It started as something not so major, and turned into a life changing experience.

Everybody knows that we all are going to die one day, but when a loved one dies; it troubles you deeper than you think. You feel like a part of you is being pulled out, and you feel the pain through your whole life. Imagine getting a knife plunged though your stomach, and having it stuck there. You remember it, and you still cry about pain, but you learn to live your life around it. Do you base your life around getting past the idea, but yet hope that the loved ones are having a better life? Ever feel like someone is watching you, and helping you live your life? It’s like there are little people muttering among the clouds, helping you make your right choice. They float around, thinking of ways to enrich your life. They mutter to each other, loud enough for others close to them to hear, but nobody else farther away can actually understand. There is a light, watery mist in the air, and smell of freshly picked flowers enriches the smell. Our loved ones chat and they brag about how good their grandchildren are doing in school, and how they are doing great in life. Is dying actually as bad as we all think it is?

Growing up with such a great role model is inspiring. I learned great lessons and morals every day since he was over from the break of dawn, to the fall of night. I loved coming home to hear his soft voice asking how my day was, and whenever I asked him how his day was, he’d always say the same thing: “50-50” This was his saying, relating to how he was doing, and his life. No matter what day or time, he would answer the same every single time. He’d talk in a voice like a feather lightly falling to the ground from the top of a building. He had always smelled like cheap cologne, and the food he had eaten recently. Once you hug him good-bye or hello, you can feel the prickles of his beard like little legs walking across your face. It’s comforting in a way that has no words to explain it.

Once the day came, where his soul had left our world to travel to the heavens, we weren’t shocked at all. We had all known it was coming, but we were actually a little surprised of how long he had lived. On his 81st birthday, we didn’t think he was going to make it to his next birthday. Surprisingly enough, he made it all the way to his 83rd. We felt so lucky to have had him longer than expected, but we knew one day or another, our luck was going to fade. All of a sudden, like a glass shattering on the floor. All glasses break you know, even the most prized ones. Each glass is different: different memories, different marks, or scratches. Each glass is like a person’s life. Some we value more than others, and some we could care less whether they break or not, but we don’t want everyone, or every glass to disappear from our lives. My grandpa was one of those prized glasses, like an antique that’s only available in a small shack in a certain town within the whole U.S. Like a glass that you feel so blessed to have.

The funeral was crowded with people of all ages. Tears covered the room as if it had poured from a rain cloud. The quiet voices muttering, and the whimpering of tears were the only voices in hearing distance. The “calming” music brought down the mood in the room. You could see the dust from people’s shoes making the air all the stuffier. The click-clack of the ladies high heels had kept a steady beat, as if it controlled the beat of the hearts in the room. The warm hugs of relatives, and the blank stare of the body balances the mood in your soul. People say they feel bad about our loss, but they don’t get it. They don’t understand our pain unless they actually lost one of their loved ones.
The thing that helps me make it through my day is the fact I have a piece of him with me all the time. I had gotten his ashes in a bottle, that’s on a necklace hanging from a cross. The hope lingers around the neck of the cross, and if I ever have to talk to him, he’s always there to listen, just as if he was here with me, in person. Like an interview, or if we are in a restaurant talking one-on-one, and he understands every word I say.