You never realize how fast someone can be taken.
Taken away from you forever,
Until it happens. Leaving behind old memories,
and a grieving family. .
A bracelet. A simple, miniscule bracelet
is what I have to remind me of him.
The words etched into the smooth rubber speak louder
to me than anything else could.

Poised around my wrist
like his words and ways cling to our lives.
“Watch what you’re doing!”
“Don’t be a fudgey!”
“Reel it in slowlyyyy.”
Its friend never far away,
always hanging around side by side.

Together they remind me
to always Livestrong and to never give up.
Just as he taught us to all those years.
Reminding me of all the memories
the good and the bad.
The sawdust covered workshop above the garage,
where I got into more things than I should.
The warm sun on our skin as we searched
for buried treasure on the school playground

and along the beach.
The way his chest would rise and fall with each last breath,
as he read me my favorite stories.
Babar, Little miss, and Richard Scarry’s Busy Town.

Playing peek-a-boo under my shirt sleeve
I grab a glance at it every now and then.
Another memory, another saying, another image,
dances through my mind.
Each one clenching my heart, and blurring my vision
with the wall of tears that they fabricate on the already

pink rims of my eyes.

Becoming worn and aged over the years,
each scratch telling a story of it's own;
Each wrinkle showing that much more wisdom.
There will come a day when the once strong
and sustained skin becomes tired and beaten.
Turning dark with spots apparent to aging.

Too soon the weathered bracelet will have fought its last battle
and no longer hang on my wrist.
The white line it leaves,
where the sun could not brown my skin in the summer,

and the familiar feeling it leaves lingering around my wrist.
Just as the familiar feeling of my grandpa still lingers in my life.

Both reminders of what used to be there.
Serving as a memento for everything that he stood for
and everything that he taught us to be.