Page 119 - KCN 2020

Death is not the opposite of life, but a part of it. There are a lot of things that can happen, no matter how prepared,
how confident you are. Death is a natural occurrence, and the Grim Reaper does not pay heed to an extra soul put to rest.

My grandfather used to do something every morning. He’d pick a fresh white carnation from the back garden and
bring it to visit my grandmother’s grave without fail. I walked with him once, forced by my mother. Despite my reluctance,
he still smiled at me, and took my little seven-year-old hand in his. While our shoes crunched the golden leaves scattered
on the brick path, my grandfather would hum little melodies, which he told me were songs my grandmother would sing
when she was alive. Foolish, impatient, young me refused to listen, often brushing him aside.
It was not until we reached the small, modest gravestone that my grandfather stopped his soft singing. Amongst
the grey and green of the hill, my grandfather placed a speck of white in the fresh grass, still wet from dew. I watched,
chest heavy with some unknown emotion that I would later know as sorrow. My grandfather stared at the stone that
bore my grandmother’s gentle face, eyes swimming with a thousand stars.

“A lo hecho, pecho,” he said. What is done is done. “The one regret I have, chica, is that I never once gave your
grandmother a flower when she was still here beside me.”

Al mejor escribano se le scarce. My two older brothers didn’t make an effort to spend time with their whiny sister, either. I was always alone, apart
I didn’t quite understand, at that time. Mother was busy with her cooking and cleaning; father’s work made him
from afternoons spent in my grandfather’s care. We weren’t a family that openly showed affection, and I didn’t know any-
va un borrón thing different.

My grandfather always told me to not think so much about the past, but to dream of the future instead. “There’s
nothing you can do but accept what has happened, for there is no going back, chica,” he murmured once, while the early
spring drizzle fell outside and his old gramophone played old Spanish songs in the late afternoon. I was ten at the time,
scribbling frantically in order to finish my schoolwork on time. “Listen to me, my dearest, for I have a story to tell.”

Tan Ginny “Your grandmother wanted to see you born, Tià,” came his soothing voice. I put down my pencil and
propped my chin in my palm, watching as the light in my grandfather’s eyes drifted to somewhere far from here,
somewhere I could not reach. “She hoped to see you in person, to hold you, as you were her first granddaughter.
You father had six brothers, you know, and your grandmother had always wanted a little girl.”

“Despite that, she accepted the fact that she would never see you or hold you, but she loved you, none-
theless. You were the only daughter she ever had,” grandfather smiled, slowly running a hand through my loose
black strands.

Illness had chipped away at her life bit by bit. My mother was days away from giving birth when
she left, sleeping and content. I never met her.

“You accept what comes by, chica.” I blinked up at him, uncomprehending. “There are things
you cannot stop, even when it comes to those you love beyond all measure. You are simply, as they say, helpless.”

My grandfather passed away when I was eleven.
His words rang in my head as my mother put me in a black dress and pinned my dark hair up in a tight bun. The
church was lined with rows of loved ones, coming to bid grandfather their last farewells.

And there my grandfather was, lying asleep in a box that I would later learn was a coffin. I realised at that
moment that my little old grandpa, who always seemed bigger than life itself, always full of stories and glittering eyes,
would never again awaken to tell me another story.
There were white carnations lining the edge of the coffin. I would never forget how my father’s hands shook
while placing his flower amongst the rest, quivering with regret, sorrow, shock and fear, all of which were things I barely
understood at the time.

Despite the magnitude of what we felt, there was nothing we could do. We could only accept it and move on.
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