- Learn how to talk, but be unable to correctly pronounce grandpa. Instead, call him “Pacquah” (paw-kah), as that’s about as close as you’ll be able to get. Your grandfather will be upset that he won’t be called grandpa but will get over it when he decides that he’s entitled to pick the most complicated spelling possible.
- Be in preschool and love the days when it’s Pacquah’s turn to pick you up. Make sure you tell all of the other preschoolers that he’s your Pacquah.
- Love your grandpa with all of your heart. Visit him all of the time in his red brick apartment building down the street from where your dad works.
- When your mom drives you and your sister over to see him, always try to guess which window goes to his apartment. Never get it right.
- Inside, greet the security guard by the doors and smell the chlorine-filled air from the indoor pool. Walk past the fountain and be misted by the cool spray of the water while brushing the back of your hand against the wet stone fountain rim.
- Run at top-three-year-old speed to the second floor. Race your little sister down the hallway to his apartment. Then when you reach his door, stand there impatiently waiting for your mom to ring the doorbell since you can’t reach it yourself.
- When the door opens, run to Pacquah. Sit on a stool at the kitchen counter and talk to him while he makes you Easy-Mac and wonder how he makes it taste so much better than the Easy-Mac mom makes you at home.
- Attack him with the best bear hugs you can manage and fall on the floor laughing uncontrollably when he retaliates with tickles.
- Take him into the small room by your favorite window with the flowers and attempt to play him something on his keyboard. It will be horrible, but he’ll tell you that it’s amazing anyway.
- Take one of the colored stones from his miniature fountain that you love so much, but tell no one and feel extremely guilty over it. Keep it with you everywhere you go as a reminder of how much you love your grandpa.
- Play with your toy dinosaurs when your mom walks in and tells you that he’s been diagnosed with brain cancer, but don’t care that much as you don’t know what that is. Continue playing with your dinosaurs once your mom leaves.
- On your fourth birthday, when he comes over to see you and is waiting on the back porch for you, cry. Be too afraid to talk to him because all of his hair has fallen out and strange white fruit loops are glued in a circle around his head. Your mom tells you later that they’re for his brain surgery the next day.
- Go to Disney World with him and your family and fight with your cousin and your mom over who gets to push him in his wheelchair.
- Remember to always laugh at his jokes, no matter how bad they are because he loves to hear you laugh and to see you smile.
- Go to his party celebrating him making it through twelve months with brain cancer and past when the doctors said he was expected to pass away. But only be upset that your mom wouldn’t let you bring a bathing suit when all of the other kids got to go swimming.
- Don’t understand why your mom comes home crying one night six months after the party. You can’t remember having ever seen her cry; be extremely confused and slightly scared, feeling like you’ve just witnessed some deep secret that you were never supposed to see. Forget to ask her why she’s crying.
- Go to Pacquah’s funeral eighteen months after he was first diagnosed. Think about seeing him again next week. Play with your cousins around the cemetery laughing and picking flowers as the service continues behind you.
- The next weekend, ask your mom why you didn’t get to go see him. She’ll start crying and tell you that you can’t see him anymore. Finally, understand that he’s not coming back. Cry with her.
- Start your first year of grief therapy at the age of six. You don’t want to keep going but you stay because the therapist gives you Oreos at the end of each session.
- Miss giving him bear-hugs and miss his tickles. Miss his smile and his Easy-Mac. Miss his giant peacock statue that was in his bedroom that used to scare you. Miss everything.
- Forget the last time you hugged him or how much you hated how scratchy his face felt when he didn’t shave. Cry some more.
- Lose the rock you stole from his miniature, colorful-stone fountain while at camp. Don’t ever stop looking for it for the whole two weeks you’re there and cry to your counselor when camp ends and you still haven’t found the rock.
- When you turn thirteen, save a seat for him up front at your bat mitzvah service using one of the stuffed animals he gave you when you were still a baby. When the service and the party end, sit in your room and wonder if he’d be proud of the person who you’ve become. Wonder how things would’ve been different if he hadn’t had cancer. Wish that he could have been with you that day.
- Visit his grave with your dad a few months later in early spring. Ask to have some time by yourself. Go pick dandelions from the lawn and smooth stones from the gravel road and place them in front of his grave because you didn’t bring anything with you. Read a chapter from the library book you recently got out aloud just like he used to do for you.
- Remember to keep him with you always and to keep smiling because you know he loved you best when you did and because that’s how you live with death.
Sarah Bett is an emerging writer from Western Pennsylvania. She is the winner of a 2017 Lincoln Park Writing Award in creative nonfiction judged by author and This American Life contributor, Davy Rothbart. She is also a staff member of BatCat Press.