My grandfather whom I spend my childhood with, passed away more than one year ago. Though it is anticipated because of his illness, the pain and sadness is worse than I expected, I might have imagine, predict, forecast but when the reality comes, it is worse. There is no time you will be ready to lose someone that you love and there is no words can describe how heavy the pain is. This whole experience also teaches something new, so heavy sadness can paralyze you, literally, it is true. Like I am trying to standing when I come in to the room where my late grandfather lied but I cannot because the wave of sadness is so big. Paralyzed. Numb. Weak.I am a true believer that the best regret in life is for the things that you didn’t do rather than something that we did. My biggest regret with regards to my grandfather departure is I don’t spend enough time to know about his childhood, his teenage life, his young adult life, his ambitions when he was young, his achievement when he was young, what drives him happy when he was a young man; all the things that he went through before he is a grey haired man who raised me. I have this privileges that he knows me so well, my ambitions, my accomplishments, things that make me happy, things that I like but I don’t know those things about him. I am not. I will never know. I only know him as my grandfather, I f I can turn back time, I want to know him as a person, as a man before I came to this life, before he became my grandfather.
His last question to me whether I am happy considering my miserable love life. He told people that the only thing that still keeps him alive is because he wants to assure my happiness so I told him before he went comma that I am happy that he doesn’t have anything to worry about, that even though my love live is complicated, I am happy in my own way, he doesn’t need to worry about me..
I considered myself strong enough to deal with my grandfather departure while other people expect the worse from me because of my intimacy with him, I don’t cry a lot especially in front of my mother and my grandmother; I work like nothing happens, like my grandfather, one of the most important person in my life is still here and every weekend, he will wait for me to visit him. What they don’t know is the first time I cried out loud after the funeral is when I flipped over the photo album and found his picture as a young man laughs, he looks very happy as a young man but yet I don’t know that part of his life, not even a bit. The second time is when I found my pictures inside his wallet. The third time is when I told my mom about my accomplishment in work and she replied by saying that usually she will share this kind of news with my grandfather and he will cherish it like it was his own accomplishment. The fourth time is when I found his handwritten of my daily schedule as a high school student. . Everything that makes me cry about him is everything that show how much he loves me and his love is how he will stay alive with me even after he is long gone..
Nadya Ardianti
[email protected]
Jakarta, Indonesia