Dear Grandpa,

I miss you wherever you are now, people miss you down here. Perhaps you just perceived it after leaving, as all of us did, but more than a father, a husband and a grandfather you were the pillar which supported all the heaviness an substance of a family. Ours. 

I met you. I grew up watching you, playing around you and being loved by you, being loved through your eyes, because you weren’t raised to express your love by words, times were tough and people were rigid. You raised your children the same way and consecutively I grew up in the same way, seeing love been hidden. It is said that grandparents give more freedom to their grandchildren because they are parents twice, they have the tolerance and kindheartedness they lacked with our parents, and I really noticed that. You were in no way enraged with me. You always talked with worry and I could see you loved me in your own way; you would alert me to what could be wrong and what I couldn’t do but sensitively, delicately, as you could.

*here

You were old since I remember, maybe because my mind was still too tiny and twisted, and you were mostly the respectful figure of someone who already lived several lives. People notice you were our support as a leader in our family. I remember such things when Christmas time arrives again and once more, every year. It is like living two lives. Before and After your departure. In the Before there is my childhood, filled with memories of giggles, union, family moments, more laughs, sunny afternoons… I can even picture you going out that door and chatting, generally murmuring about something, since you were so stubborn and would mumble a lot when your were irritated by something or somebody, though it was quite amusing to see. Then, there's the After. After you have vanished everything became dim and colder. Everyone got distant. There is a family divided in many others. There are quarrels, a lot of disagreements. People argue for the most irrelevant matters. Resentment. Loss. Depression. Silence. My eyes are filled with salty tears when I imagine how different it used to be and then how to see you dying, fading in the front of us changed the whole thing, how frustrating was to be a child and do not be able to cry while every person, from kids to grown-ups were suffocating in tears and being helped out by each others. Why no one looked at me that nighttime. I was petrified. There was a heavy body lacing us. In one moment it was a party, a child was unwrapping gifts, you were laughing. Next second you went outside and time stopped, going forward in bumps, fractionated in fragments.Doctors. Moan. Coffin. Your black shoes. That old clock stuck to the wall that rings in every single new hour, making the walls groaning. Silence.

 Christmas was never the same after your left. We all became colder. Christmas became more like something that should pass quickly and drop us in reality again. Where are you? Will it ever be like it once was. Can we fill our hopes with laughs and drops of happiness again? Is it possible that one day we can meet again? I will be as old as you, or will I be the same age when you left? I will be as small next to you as I was once, watching you mumbling with your stubbornness. I will not see you falling again because now you can't fall, you can fly. I just wanted to make sure I think about you and I love you even if I never was wise enough to let know through words. Love is a language we need to learn. Some get it form the first instant of their lives, while others learn it differently. Christmas reminds me of you, I certainly will never forget you. Merry Christmas Grandpa. Wherever you are I'm thinking of you and not dropping tears but saluting you. One day we will meet again, and have Christmas as it should be. Maybe while I dream a dream. 

Yours, 

-- 

(P.S. for the readers - Don't be sorry about me. I'm sure that we all already have lost someone we treasured, this is more a writing exercise with my emotions as the basis.)