Growing up, there were not so many times I really thought about “death”. When my mind started stepping on the idea of it, this self-protection mode I might say always immediately activated. I would start shaking and breathing heavily which made me realized that this is a topic that I should avoid bringing it into my head. I don’t exactly know when and how this happened to me. Maybe sometimes in my early years, I might experience some sort of dead and it affected me since then. It might be when my first dog died or when I saw the death of this goldfish which was accidentally stepped on when it jumped from a bowl to the floor or it might be everything altogether. I still can not figure out. However, we cannot run away from death forever. 

I grew up in a big family in some senses, there was my father, my mother, my grandmother, my two younger brothers, and me. Not to mention that our house regularly visited by the uncles and aunts, the cousins, the family friends, and my grandfather. The most fun one out of them all is my grandfather. He was the best grandfather that every child could ask for. He himself lived quite far away from us in a house with this big garden, there are sections for flowers, fruits, a pond, and what I loved most a playground with treehouses. When he came to visit me and my brothers, he loved to bring us some strange animals like a gecko, an owl, beetle, and many more you that in one garden could have. He was also an inventor who made toys for us, from a slingshot to a small boat. Not only he visited us, but we were also the ones who visited him whenever it was possible. I loved to visit him as every visit it was like me going on an adventure. I was not just in my grandpa's garden house, but I was in this magical world where I could be anything and everything around me was exciting and amusing. For me, he was one of my most favorite people growing up. 

Last December, he passed away after he had been paralyzed for ten years. There were so many things that happened and I was trying to avoid it for the whole time like the way I avoided death. However, this time I could not turn away from it, all of them hit me at once right into my face. Before he had a stroke, which led to him being paralyzed later, I and my siblings grew older and grew distant from him. We were busy with school, new friends, and new shiny plastic toys. Grandpa’sgarden and his little world were no longer special to us. We barely visited him, but we still communicated with him through the phone. I was the one who talked to him most. He told me stories sometimes they were funny and sometimes they were indescribably sad. I cannot recall what we were talking about but there was this one time that he thanked me for being the one who still found him as my favorite grandpa, and he loved me so much. This went on until I was in the last year of high school. 

One day my mom got a call from a hospital that he had a stroke. We went to visit him at a hospital. He looked sick, but he told us he will be okay soon. We believed that, but it was not what happened after. It turned out that he was unilateral paresis which left one side of the body paralyzed. Normally he lived alone by himself at the garden house, now he had to move in to live with us. My mom took care of him from feeding him to helping him go to the toilet, and me helping her with all that. Sometimes he had to stay at nursing care as my mom had to take care of my grandma as well, and I selfishly tried my best to avoid taking care of him with all accuses I could make because I found it tiresome and boring. I fooled myself that it was okay not to be with him because I still had times to make up for it. Death was out of my sight or I just turned blind eyes on it. At that time, to my ignorant self, he was not my favorite grandpa anymore. He became my family burden. It had been like that for ten years or until last year. Now I truly understand when they say you will never know when the last goodbye will come. Thinking back about it makes me angry to the point that it is impossible for me to forgive myself. I should have known better. I feel ashamed of distancing myself from him when he needed me most just because being with him was not fun anymore. I feel overwhelmed by the thought that I betrayed his love that he had given me just because he was not the same as he used to be. How could I turn my back to the guy who planted in me the love for arts, nature, and animals which made me who I am today? How could I be indifferent toward him who made my childhood great memories that one could ask for? I do deserve these guilty feelings. I will never ever forget this, and I promise to become a better person for my loved ones.

Granpa, sorry for everything and I really miss you.