It was a grey February morning in San Antonio, Texas, which perfectly fit my mood. I felt strangely awake that morning, alive and filled with an energy that; although I couldn’t label as good or bad, still had me taking a step back from my cereal in the morning, out of fear that I might combust and blow my brains all over it. It was the feeling that something was about to happen, or that in that moment, something already had happened, that had me on the edge of my seat in the bus and on my way to school.
As it turns out, something had happened, and I was unnerved for a reason. I remember calling my mom, who was back home in Mexico for the week, on my way to school, to ask if everything was alright.
“Hello?” My mom sounded distant, voice quavering a little at the end of the word. I, freshly having read Sherlock Holmes and thinking I was a world-class super detective, thought I would use my sleuthy skills and investigate.
“Is everything okay?” Silence, and then a sudden gasp for breath. It almost sounded like my mother, the strongest person that I knew existed in the entire world, was crying.  No, that couldn’t be. It just didn’t add up.
“Yeah, don’t worry sweetie. Get ready for school.”
Before I could tell her that I was already on my way to school and that I was, indeed, very worried, the line went silent. She hung up on me.
I worriedly got by first period, and it being fourth grade in elementary school, my inquietude didn’t directly affect my grades or conduct. When first period was over, I hurriedly got my textbooks into my cubbie and headed out for recess. Once again, looking up into that blank grey sky, my stomach churned. Something was wrong. Something was off. Just as I managed to shake the feeling off and join all the other kids for recess, I felt someone grab my shoulder and pull. My feet were suddenly off the ground, replaced by adrenaline and the flailing of my hands. I plunged headfirst into the gravel, apparently a prompt for kids to turn and point towards me. I was disoriented and terrified, and as I looked back, I saw my teacher’s perturbed face.
“Fran, are you alright?” She patted at my back and chest, and I suddenly perceived that I resembled a dust cloud.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Sorry, you just scared me.”
“Do you need to go to the nurse?” I shook my head, eager to change the topic. The infirmary at my school was not my favorite place on earth.
“Um… so what did you need me for?” I asked, grabbing at my aching head.
“Your dad is here to pick you up.” She looked around at the intrigued faces of gossip-hungry fourth graders, then leaned into my ear and whispered: “He says it’s urgent.”
Apparently she didn’t say it quietly enough, because a couple of “ooh’s” and “aah’s” escaped the crowd. My agitation then turned into nausea, which for me, was an instant trigger for a cheeky attitude. I looked around at the now fascinated fourth graders, and said, “Oh shut up. I know there’s nothing interesting going on in your lives, you bunch of dull babies.” I hurriedly walked in the double doors, where the main hallway lead to the office, not bothering to see how the students reacted to my bitter comment. I was utterly unprepared for the mortifying sight that unfolded when I made the right turn into the office.

My sisters cried desperately, clinging into my father, who looked on the verge of tears, whispering impotent words of consolation to them. And that’s the thing about losing someone, no matter what, in that moment, you want nothing more than to die with them. I looked at my dad, and his look told me everything. My grandfather, whom I had been told was sick but denied any further information, was-
I ran. I bolted back down the hallway, away from my dad,  and into my English classroom. The usually complacent carpet and decor now made me qualmish and rickety, and I knew in that moment that there was nothing that I could do to bring him back, nothing that I could say or do or be to see him again. And it is in these honest moments with ourselves, these moments in which we deny ourselves the luxury of daydreaming, of making up excuses and thoughts and words to make us feel better, creating pictures inside our minds of the good that isn’t happening in reality, that we find ourselves in our truest and purest form. And when I found my true form in that fourth grade classroom, I knew that the only way to stop the pain would be to face it. So I took the book I was reading, Looking for Alaska by John Green, wiped my tears and looked at myself in the reflection of the window, and I said “to hell with it.” I walked back out the door, down the hallway, and faced the agony I had been so cowardly avoiding when I ran away from it. My grandfather, along with his aura of familiarity and security, was dead.
I allowed myself to say that word, and only that word. Not gone, or passed away, because those are the words people use when they are denying themselves the pain that they should be feeling. He was dead, and there was nothing that I could do about it.

Despite myself, the tears came even before I got into the car. It’s inevitable, to grieve for a loved one, no matter how many times you tell yourself not to. The imminent feeling grew like a fueled fire in my stomach, until I was full-on sobbing.
“Don’t worry, Fran. We’re leaving for Mexico. We’ll be there in time for the funeral.” The car had already been packed tight with suitcases and bags. Except it didn’t feel like leaving: it felt like going home.
I remember that ride, even if it was a blur. I remember the stiffness of the dialogue between my usually talkative sisters, my dad and I, whispering only when we needed to go to the bathroom or when we needed a suitcase moved from our feet because it was giving us cramps. I remember looking out the window throughout the entire ride, looking up to the sky and silently cursing at the heavens, for taking him from me. The familiar scent was gone forever, the aroma of security and home. Gone. Simply gone. I remember stopping for the fancy black shoes that I would wear for the funeral, the kind that make your feet cramp up in weird places. But most of all, I remember wondering if somewhere, somehow, my grandfather was wondering about us too.

I read the book I brought from school throughout the ride, Looking for Alaska by John Green. I remember getting it only because my parents specifically ordered me not to read it due to (and I remember them saying these exact words) “inappropriate language and actions”, and as a 10 year old, this was unequivocally an indication to read the book. I fell in love with it, thinking that my parents were wrong, that none of the inappropriate content was gratuitous in any way, and I still think that. I finished that book during the ride, and I remember that when I finished that final word and closed it, I was closing the open valve in my soul, that was slowly ripping it apart.

I think a quote from that book saved me. I wasn’t going to kill myself, no, but I would’ve dealt with the situation in an entirely different manner than I actually did. I think dealing with death as the book does molded me into becoming who I am today. And it’s funny, how paper and ink can change lives, sculpting them into something they weren’t before, but they can. These are the words changed mine:

“Because I will forget her, yes. That which came together will fall apart imperceptibly slowly, and I will forget, but she will forgive my forgetting, just as I forgive her for forgetting me and the Colonel and everyone but herself and her mom in those last moments she spent as a person. I know now that she forgives me for being dumb and scared and doing the dumb and scared thing. I know she forgives me, just as her mother forgives her. And here’s how I know:
I thought at first that she was just dead. Just darkness. Just a body being eaten by bugs. I thought about her a lot like that, as something’s meal. What was her- green eyes, half a smirk, the soft curves of her legs- would soon be nothing, just the bones I never saw. I thought about the slow process of becoming bone and then fossil and then coal that will, in millions of years, be mined by humans of the future, and how they would heat their homes with her, and then she would be smoke billowing out of a smokestack, coating the atmosphere. I still think that, sometimes, think that maybe “the afterlife” is just something we made up to ease the pain of loss, to make our time in the labyrinth bearable. Maybe she was just matter, and matter gets recycled.
But ultimately I do not believe that she was only matter. The rest of her must be recycled, too. I believe now that we are greater than the sum of our parts. If you take Alaska’s genetic code and you add her life experiences and the relationships she had with people, and then you take the size and shape of her body, you do not get her. There is something else entirely. There is a part of her greater than the sum of her knowable parts. And that part has to go somewhere, because it cannot be destroyed.
Although no one will ever accuse me of being much of a science student, one thing I learned from science classes is that energy is never created and never destroyed. And if Alaska took her own life, that is the hope I wish I could have given her. Forgetting her mother, failing her mother and her friends and herself- those are awful things, but she did not need to fold into herself and self-destruct. Those awful things are survivable, because we are as indestructible as we believe ourselves to be. When adults say, “Teenagers think they are invincible” with that sly, stupid smile on their faces, they don’t know how right they are. We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think that we are invincible because we are. We cannot be born, and we cannot die. like all energy, we can only change shapes and sizes and manifestations. They forget that when they get old. They get scared of losing and failing. But that part of us greater than the sum of our parts cannot begin and cannot end, and so it cannot fail.
So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison’s last words were: “It’s very beautiful over there.” I don’t know where there is, but I believe it’s somewhere, and I hope it’s beautiful.”

And in that moment, when my eyes skimmed through the final words that would end the book, I knew, that my grandfather was somewhere, is somewhere, and that no matter where there is, he is there and he is with us and although he might be changing sizes and shapes and manifestations,  he is still something, and he is still somewhere. And I hope that that somewhere, no matter where it is, I hope that somewhere is beautiful.