My grandfather passed away in March of last year. He was the first of my grandparents to die, and with his death I was unwillingly ushered into a new club that I had previously never been a part of; Losing Someone You Knew Well.
He had been sick for several weeks, and my mom flew home from Spain at the beginning of the month to see him. I was in the first few months of crazy pregnancy sickness with Keilana, doing my best to get through the days as well as possible with my little Javi toddling around. My mom would go over to my grandpa’s house (he lived alone, my grandparents separated years before I was born) and spend a few hours with him, mostly trying to get him to eat something. I asked a few times to go with her, but she discouraged me against it, saying that he was belligerent, emaciated and barely a shell of the person he had once been.
He passed away on March 13th. He had made arrangements for his body to be cremated, and wanted no funeral, memorial service or remembrance of any kind. He simply wanted his ashes to be spread on the land that he owned a few hours to the south of our city.
My grandfather was many things, among them, a full fledged hoarder. The family started clearing out the house almost immediately, knowing that it would take many, many hours of work. We sorted through bookcases, cupboards and cabinets, finding food that had expired years ago. My uncle sat at the kitchen table and patiently looked through thousands of receipts, old bills and tiny, scribbled notes, trying to locate important documents like the deeds to the house and land, and make some sense of the rest of it. We looked through boxes of books that had been stacked up for years, sometimes finding duplicates and triplicates of the same book. We found more band aids, rubber bands, sharpies, twist ties, post it notes, and Q tips than I have ever seen in my life.
After all of the worthless items had been disposed of, and there was some semblance of organization to the items, my family urged me to go through his kitchen items to see if there was anything I wanted or needed. I stood in his little office, a room I hadn’t seen in years because it had been packed full of stuff, and looked through piles of utensils, cups, serving dishes and kitchen gadgets. I pulled out a few things, one of them a bread knife. I had mentioned to Lover just a few weeks before that I wanted one. I put it in the box along with a few other little things I had chosen to bring home - a crab magnet that I always remember being on his fridge, a mortar and pestle, a few Sharpies.
We use that knife almost every day. So often, when I grab it to cut into a steaming loaf of bread, hot from my oven, I think of my Grandpa. I have terrible memories of his last few years while he suffered from dementia. He would call me up sobbing, apologizing for events that I had no idea what he was talking about. Other times he would call and yell at me, berating me for some simple sentence that I had said to him, that in his mind had become the worst of offences. He either missed family gatherings completely, or showed up looking gaunt and bewildered. It broke my heart each time.
So instead, I think of the memories I have of him from when I was a little girl. Sitting in his living room, watching Karate Kid for the thousandth time, while my mom cleaned his house. Sitting on his lap at the old kitchen table, while he fed us Nutter Butters from the bread box on his counter.
The way his mustache and beard tickled when he kissed me on the cheek. Eating grapes from the vines he grew outside his door. If there was a way to take those grape vines, I would have. “Working” for Grandpa to pay my way to horse camp, which mostly consisted of coffee and donut breaks, lunch and afternoon snacks. The time he took me school supply shopping, where I bought a tiny purple stapler and the most expensive sneakers I’ve ever owned.
I remember him telling us that he had finally quit smoking, and how he was moved to tears when my mom told him that my brothers had prayed every day for years for him to quit.
I remember his funny and unique laugh, that sounded like an exclamation point. The day he came over with my Grandma and held baby Javi, ever so carefully, his worn, gnarled hands cradling my infant son. My grandma chided him to be careful, and he barked back “I know what I’m doing!” And he did, he had seven children with my grandma, five of them boys!
We celebrated his life last summer, just two weeks before Keilana was born. I looked at the display of photos and was struck by how much my uncles each look like him, in different ways. My dad spoke about my grandfather and did a wonderful job of remembering him without glossing over the difficulties of his personality. My grandpa was not without flaws, but he’ll forever be my grandpa, and I’ll always think of him when I use that old bread knife.
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