Alpha Biographies

Letter: G

G is for Grandpa

 

Throughout my entire life, or for as long as I can remember, I’ve lived next door to my grandfather. He had a barn attached to his house, and everyday when I came home from school, I knew he would be in there, building some sort of contraption that would look ridiculous, but would definitely work. It became a routine for me to go see him up there when the weather was nice. It was something that me even more excited to go home, because I never knew what we would be doing or what we would build. He taught me all sorts of things up there, like what the different types of screwdrivers are, how to determine what type of wood something was made of, etc. You get the idea.

 

Once we ran out of things to build, (for the time being), we set out to try and clean the entire barn. He would have me crawl along the rafters and would hand me stuff to store up there because I was light enough that the wood wouldn’t break, but also strong enough to lift heavy boxes and put them where they needed to go. We worked on that just about everyday from the time I got back from school until I had to go home to eat dinner. A summer later, we were done cleaning. Everything was where it should be, and nothing was left just laying around. Now what?

 

Pretty soon, it became routine for us to just sit near the front of the barn and talk. By this point, I was 11 or 12, and I had more and more homework to do every night, which kept me from going up there all the time. But I still went up as much as I could, even if it was only for a few hours. When I could, I would get there, and our chairs were already set up, his yellow one with the rip in the back next to my blue one that was meant for the beach. We would sit next to each other each day and talk about everything. How was my day, have I seen this movie, HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN THAT MOVIE OH MY GOD, what was my favorite song, basically the most random things possible. We would have debates about the cast of a movie, who ended up with who in our favorite books, and each of these debates would end with him throwing his arms in the air and saying, “I give up, you win!” Thinking back on it now, I realize that he was doing it because I was a little kid, and that I didn’t actually win the arguments.

 

He was basically my best friend. Knowing that, you can probably understand how devastated I was when he died. The day before my birthday, I was at a friend’s house, and it was a little after 8 in the morning when we woke up. We were trying to pick a movie to watch, when my dad showed up. He told me that my grandfather had woken up not able to breathe, and died on the way to the hospital. I felt like the entire world came crashing down around me. I was lost, I didn’t know what to do next or anything. I didn’t know how to react. The one person I had trusted with everything, who I knew I could talk to, who threatened to break the legs off of any guy who hurt me, was gone, and he was never coming back.

 

The week after it happened it basically a big blur. I don’t really remember what I did to celebrate my birthday, I just remember faking smiles for my family members when they came to comfort  us, and having to hug a bunch of people who were crying into my shoulder. I remember his funeral, and having to hug even more people that I didn’t know. I was fine during the day for some reason, probably because I had something to do, but once I got bored or didn’t have anything occupying my time, I would start crying because I knew that if this had happened before, I would have been able to go to the barn, and I would be having a conversation with him. But soon, I started to pull it together. I could walk in the barn and get something without feeling like I was going to throw up, I could think about him without crying, bla bla bla stuff like that. Of course, I’m still sad that I don’t have him anymore, if you knew him you would be too. But I’m also glad that I got to have him in my life. I’m glad that I can look back and remember spending entire summers in the barn, that I know the names of all sorts of actors and actresses from when he was a kid, that I have memories of him that I’ll never be able to forget.

Life Lesson: It’s not the end of the world if you lose someone you love.