I found out this very morning that my grandfather died. I never knew my grandfather from my father's side, as he died long before I was even born yet. Now one of the men who have been a relevant part of my life and decisive factors in who I am or I became today, has also passed on without me having a chance to say, at least, good bye.
At first, I sat here, silent for a moment in front of my computer, while my dad was relating the details of his death, funeral and burial. I learned that he died almost a week ago on a Monday or a Tuesday and that he was buried sometime last Friday, but somehow, in all this time, nobody found the time to tell me about it, as if it was considered that his death wouldn't have been important enough for me.
All of a sudden, tears are stuck in my throat and blankness sets in my mind, a feeling which I have so very rarely experienced, that it took me by surprise..not that it would have been the first time I was taken by surprise today.
Dad tried to justify this awful silence, crass ignorance, huge lack of empathy or whatever the term to best describe it would be, by telling me that "even if they would have told you he died, it wasn't like you could have done something about it".
A nonetheless true but savagely cruel statement, not only because of how I felt about grandpa, regardless of the state of his health in the past few years, but because by this I could only hear how insignificant a man's life can become even in the eyes of his close ones. And tears started rolling down my cheek for the first time in a long time, while I sat here unable and unwilling to do anything to stop them.
Grandpa died after living his last years in the agony of disease and isolation from those he worked his whole life to see grow, develop, evolve and succeed at becoming better human beings than he could be. Even though in the late years of his life his health, both physical and mental, became more and more eroded with time, I can't remember anything of that period.
He was a man of few words, or so I may remember him now, but not at all a man who had nothing to say. He's still standing tall in front of my eyes in his long leather trench coat with his dark rabbit fur hat full of snow, after a full day spent on the construction site, smelling of winter and cold as he comes through the door bringing fresh bread and pretzels from that bakery which is way across town from where we lived let alone from where he worked. His cheek is cold and rough as he hugs us on the way in handing us his leather bag, with the bread and pretzels still hot inside.
He was an impressive sight, my grandfather!
What he may have lacked in schooling, he certainly made up for it tenfold in character. He was truly a man shaped by the principles of his parents, which he took up and made his own afterward for the rest of his life.
I don't remember ever seeing him crying, I don't remember ever seeing him complaining about how hard life was or how tough could be out there while earning the daily bread for the family. He seemed to embrace, maybe even revel into all that hard labor he was doing on construction sites everywhere in Romania and abroad when the opportunity had shown itself, believing that hard work alone can shape a boy into a real man and make him experience life as it really is.
He always talked so proudly about his 3-years mandatory military service in the Mountain Rangers (or whatever the English equivalent for that army branch would be) when due to those times he could only get r&r twice throughout his whole service period, later on mocking college boys like us who thought they knew it all and were saying "No!" to the 6-months-only mandatory military service, preferring to take up our chances with the law just to keep ourselves out of the ridiculous and nonsensical institution that Romanian Army became after the '89 Revolution (not that it would have been some whirlpool of life-altering knowledge before either, but at least my grandpa had been tough enough to go through 3 whole years of service and remain the man I got to know and love growing up).
And I remember him, as if in a dream now, telling his stories, sometimes on a very serious note and other times just joking and thinking back I suddenly realize that my life was so deeply affected by his life principles and I wasn't even aware of this until now after learning of his death.
He was an impressive man, my grandpa, and I wish I could have had the chance to say one last "I love you!" to the man from whom I learned that if you love someone you stick to them your entire life and do your best to make sure they are happy, no matter how hard or unrewarding it will seem at times!
At first, I sat here, silent for a moment in front of my computer, while my dad was relating the details of his death, funeral and burial. I learned that he died almost a week ago on a Monday or a Tuesday and that he was buried sometime last Friday, but somehow, in all this time, nobody found the time to tell me about it, as if it was considered that his death wouldn't have been important enough for me.
All of a sudden, tears are stuck in my throat and blankness sets in my mind, a feeling which I have so very rarely experienced, that it took me by surprise..not that it would have been the first time I was taken by surprise today.
Dad tried to justify this awful silence, crass ignorance, huge lack of empathy or whatever the term to best describe it would be, by telling me that "even if they would have told you he died, it wasn't like you could have done something about it".
A nonetheless true but savagely cruel statement, not only because of how I felt about grandpa, regardless of the state of his health in the past few years, but because by this I could only hear how insignificant a man's life can become even in the eyes of his close ones. And tears started rolling down my cheek for the first time in a long time, while I sat here unable and unwilling to do anything to stop them.
Grandpa died after living his last years in the agony of disease and isolation from those he worked his whole life to see grow, develop, evolve and succeed at becoming better human beings than he could be. Even though in the late years of his life his health, both physical and mental, became more and more eroded with time, I can't remember anything of that period.
He was a man of few words, or so I may remember him now, but not at all a man who had nothing to say. He's still standing tall in front of my eyes in his long leather trench coat with his dark rabbit fur hat full of snow, after a full day spent on the construction site, smelling of winter and cold as he comes through the door bringing fresh bread and pretzels from that bakery which is way across town from where we lived let alone from where he worked. His cheek is cold and rough as he hugs us on the way in handing us his leather bag, with the bread and pretzels still hot inside.
He was an impressive sight, my grandfather!
What he may have lacked in schooling, he certainly made up for it tenfold in character. He was truly a man shaped by the principles of his parents, which he took up and made his own afterward for the rest of his life.
I don't remember ever seeing him crying, I don't remember ever seeing him complaining about how hard life was or how tough could be out there while earning the daily bread for the family. He seemed to embrace, maybe even revel into all that hard labor he was doing on construction sites everywhere in Romania and abroad when the opportunity had shown itself, believing that hard work alone can shape a boy into a real man and make him experience life as it really is.
He always talked so proudly about his 3-years mandatory military service in the Mountain Rangers (or whatever the English equivalent for that army branch would be) when due to those times he could only get r&r twice throughout his whole service period, later on mocking college boys like us who thought they knew it all and were saying "No!" to the 6-months-only mandatory military service, preferring to take up our chances with the law just to keep ourselves out of the ridiculous and nonsensical institution that Romanian Army became after the '89 Revolution (not that it would have been some whirlpool of life-altering knowledge before either, but at least my grandpa had been tough enough to go through 3 whole years of service and remain the man I got to know and love growing up).
And I remember him, as if in a dream now, telling his stories, sometimes on a very serious note and other times just joking and thinking back I suddenly realize that my life was so deeply affected by his life principles and I wasn't even aware of this until now after learning of his death.
He was an impressive man, my grandpa, and I wish I could have had the chance to say one last "I love you!" to the man from whom I learned that if you love someone you stick to them your entire life and do your best to make sure they are happy, no matter how hard or unrewarding it will seem at times!
