My grandpa is one of those people that is hard to describe unless you knew him. I think that a lot of people say that but I really, really mean it. I have a lot of cousins. And I know a lot of people also say that, but I also really, really mean it. We are the type of family that has to rent out a Town Hall for our family Christmas. Growing up, I used to get a little jealous that all my other cousins (on my grandpa and grandma’s side) would think of my grandpa like their grandpa. I used to get a little possessive like “NO. That is MY grandpa.” But now I look back on it with a lot of pride. He had the type of personality that could fill a room, it was truly magnetic and everyone always wanted to be around him. My grandpa always wore funny t-shirts. One of them he wore on Spring Break and it was a Goldfish t shirt that he ended up giving to my cousin for Christmas a few years later (I have since taken that shirt and it is one of my most prized possessions). And when I was young my friends used to call him “Hot Damn” grandpa because one time when they came over he was wearing a red cut off shirt with Hot Damn on it in flames. His personality was magnetic, but what I will always admire the most about my grandpa was that he was genuinely a good person. He would have done anything for anyone. And he was a devout Catholic. When I think about the people who practice the love that they preach, I think about him. He was the reason why the glimmer of light with God never went away for me. 

My family knew that I liked to write. But I always felt like they didn’t understand what I wrote and I also didn’t really show them openly (probably because it was dark and twisty and they would have put me in therapy). But I remember my dad asking me if I could write a little poem for my grandpa’s funeral. I went in my room and wrote this on a piece of paper and brought it back in no more than ten minutes later. I was choking out the words through the tears reading it to them and I remember him staring back at me and saying “you just did that?” To me, it wasn’t the best poem I had written, but the impact that it had and the significance of my parents taking my poetry seriously, is priceless.

After my grandpa died my dad and I went to the river walk, because we both feel the most comfort around water. I almost feel as if we just floated there, gravitating to the flow of what keeps us going. I remember he kept saying that it doesn’t feel real, that he can’t believe it. I don’t remember what I said except I can see myself walking next to him. Like I was above watching in the eyes of one of the many cardinals that we saw in the bare trees. Perfect, red cardinals. It was like he needed to send us the most basic sign so that we, the two most unobservant people in the world, couldn’t miss it. Then it went on from there, watching myself from above going through the motions. I spoke at his funeral. It was a metaphor about how people, throughout their lives, carry an invisible string wherever they have gone that leaves a trail behind them, tying them to everything they have ever loved. And how after someone passes, this string turns a fluorescent yellow and we can see how one person connected us and all of the different things they have touched. How did I do that? How did I stand up there and talk about something that wasn’t even real in my head? I believe that his hand was wrapped around my heart holding it together. 

Even though my grandpa passed, I still look for him in everything I do. I talk to him when I’m making decisions, and I hear his answer in my gut feelings. It took my grandpa dying for me to finally see the signs that God was sending me. For a long time these signs were written off as coincidences. Something that “weirdly happened” at the same time that instantly brought me back to his voice, his contagious laugh or the way that he loved. It would bring me back to the pieces that I also loved about myself. 

My grandpa died in Fort Myers Beach, Florida where my family has vacationed for over 50 years. Growing up we would go on long walks on the beach and look for shells. I remember having a small book where all the shells had a name and description and I’m almost positive that my dad had it memorized. My aunt and my dad would study the shell books when they were kids and then they would glue the shells together to make little animals to sell on the beach. When my dad and aunt heard the news of my grandpa they immediately flew to Florida to be with my grandma and work out the details of the funeral. It was comforting for them to be there and feel the ocean air and walk the beach. After years and years of looking for a shell called the Crucifix, they found one in plain sight. The crucifix shell is actually the head skeleton of a hardhead catfish but literally resembles Jesus on the cross.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was the first of one of the many signs from my grandpa. What was a little more confusing for me was where my grandpa was because I felt him too much for him to be really, really gone. It felt like with the crucifix shell that resembled Jesus on the cross, that he was with Jesus. But this felt a little too easy for me, a little too predictable. And remember at 17, I still believed that if God was good, why was this happening to my family? 

The small coincidences didn’t stop there. But at this point they were “the good in the bad.” When someone asked what I believed in, it was always “the good in the bad.” I based all of my beliefs around there being little glimmers of light during the bad times that would allow me to push through. It was my family becoming even closer than before, the cardinals surrounding my dad and I while walking the riverwalk the day my grandpa passed, and it was this small moment in time in Barcelona, Spain. 

Entry 7/27/16

(Written at age 18)

It’s 10:07 pm in Barcelona Spain

I’m across the world and maybe you are too. 

Right above me or to my left, maybe my right. 

I’m still trying to figure out where people go when they die. 

I saw you in that feather that stuck to my shoe and your signature was lined in the lyrics carefully carved in stone.

The same lyrics they sang at your funeral, if you were there. (isn’t that a weird thought? I saw your body but where are you laughing now? I know it has to be somewhere because I can’t get the echo out of my head) 

I couldn’t figure out why I felt like your hand was squeezing mine when that man, sitting on an old chair in the middle of the walkway, started playing the song “Hallelujah”

He probably has his own problems too. 

This is a poem that always hits me differently than others. It was such a brief moment in time that could have easily been forgotten if I didn’t write it out. The lyrics that were sung at his funeral (along with the lyrics that are now tattooed into my skin) were carved into a cathedral. The most important thing about this poem, though, is the squeezing of my hand. This used to be something that I thought I was imagining, that now I wholeheartedly believe to be real and true. When I spoke at my grandpa’s funeral, I felt a squeeze too. How else would I have been able to hold it together? Grandpa’s die, yes. But they take a piece of their heart with them.