When my grandfather died, I cried. Not because he was dead, but because of how unfair it was. Even now, I lie awake, thinking about the unfairness of it all.
Cancer, of course. It broke my grandfather. And there are so many books and movies and news stories about people with cancer who rise up and live, but my grandfather fell. What kind of reality is that? He was the strongest man I've ever known, and he died defeated.
I don't talk about him often. I regret it. I more often talk about my other grandfather, my mother's father, who lives in a palace and loves money more than any other member of his family. I'm constantly complaining about the latest remark he made about a poor person or about a politician he saw on TV. But I never talk about my other grandfather.
They are about as different as day and night. My mother's father is ridiculously healthy, is easily angered, and is happily living in his palace with his multiple servants, probably currently planning to call me and brag about the latest charity he'd participated in last week.
My father's father was resolutely quiet, and had a stern brow and soft eyes. He gave the impression of being very old and very wise. He was painfully thin, however, and his arms were half the thickness of my own, and his weight was almost the same as my seven-year-old cousin. Cancer had eaten him up from the inside. I loved him more than most things in the world. He died a couple weeks ago.
When it happened, I wanted to write about it immediately. But I couldn't. I didn't know what to say. All that came to my mind was that it was unfair. It was so unfair.
Because besides being one of the strongest people I had ever known, he was so good. He owned four shirts and four pairs of pants, because he had given away the rest of his clothes to people who had lost everything in the monsoon floods. Can you imagine? A cancer-ridden man, wading out into the flooded streets, giving away his clothes. Nobody even knew until my dad went to clean out his closet before the funeral.
And his brother. My great-uncle had stolen my grandfather's birthright and taken tons of money. And yet, when he and his wife died, my grandfather paid for the education and marriages of all his children. No one knew about that, either, until the children themselves came to the funeral and told me that my grandfather was the only reason they were alive.
That was the thing. The church was full of people during the funeral service. I cannot count how many people came up to me and told me that my grandfather was responsible for everything they had. And I hadn't known. I had reduced my grandfather, one of the people I loved most in the world, to his disease.
A black cloud hung over the house after he died. Everyone was silent and weary, and when the wake occurred, I couldn't even cry because the man lying in the coffin didn't look like my grandfather. He was like a wraith, thin and sickly and defeated. It didn't even look like him.
It only really hit me when I met one of his brothers for the first time. He was thin as well, but not sickly. He had wise, kind eyes and a practical haircut. He was the carbon copy of my grandfather before he'd gotten sick. And when he smiled and put his hands on my shoulders, and said, "My precious daughter" as my grandfather once did, my heart broke. Because his voice was the voice of my grandfather, who I would never, ever see again.
He carried my grandfather's face and his voice. And when he walked away from me, I wanted to run after him, or scream, or do something because if I didn't I was losing my grandfather forever.
I didn't do anything. He simply walked away, wearing one of those starched shirts my grandfather always wore, and the traditional mundu he felt most comfortable in. He walked away, straight into the sunlight, and disappeared.
I couldn't forget it. Not when my grandmother was braiding my hair, not in the morning, when I was pretending I hadn't heard my mother crying at night, not when I was eating or even on the plane back home. Or even now. Because I had lost my grandfather forever. Forever forever.
The last time I saw him, I didn't embrace him because he told me that he was still affected by the radiation of some treatment he'd received a couple of days prior. I should've. It haunts me.
My only consolation is that my grandfather has now entered The Place With Wings. He is there, standing and looking up at the trees and the sky and the perpetual summer. His body is cleaned of the monster that had once inhabited him. The grass is cool and bright beneath him, and the sunlight reflects off of his starched shirt. Maybe, in the distance, he can see me, too, wishing I had embraced him two months ago, wishing I could tell him about my college applications or how difficult my math class is.
My grandfather was an architect. I can see him in The Place, building bridges over clouds and scaling palaces, hammering diamonds into tree bark. Sprouting wings himself. Head bowed, heads steady, not sick. At peace.
And I will be, one day, too. At peace. And one day, I will enter The Place, and I will see my grandfather, and he will look away from the trees, smiling gently, and say:
"My precious daughter. You have come home."
