The Importance of Remembrance

The Importance of Remembrance.

It all seems like it was just yesterday when I was visiting you. You sat there, looking at me in the most loving, yet free and careless gaze. Tell me grandpa, where did the years go? I know the living conditions were not the best in your Bronx apartment, always the upstairs neighbors running around like horses, but life, itself, was good. Being able to wake up every morning, breath the air, call your loved ones. Your mere existence, now I begin to realize, was a treasure by itself. Sadly, only now I understand that. You don’t know what you have till it’s gone. Sadly, I see that expression is true.
But, why, why I ask you, did you have to leave me at the tender age of five. You lived to see the 2000’s, but why couldn’t you stay to see me turn 13, graduate from elementary school, why? Now we all cry in spite of your memory, hoping you will visit us in our dreams, guide us, watch us from above. But why?
So tomorrow, I shall light a vanilla-scented candle, in reminiscence, in spite of the years we spent together, all the things we didn’t get to do together, and so you know that you will know that you are forever in our hearts. It has been eight years.
I see your photograph, Deda, and the thought of the horrible cancer that ailed you unnerves me. But I know you are at peace. 

Rest in peace,
Lusik, a wonderful husband, father, deda, and my heart’s lullaby.