His body is cold but his face looks serene and peaceful and it reminds me of the days he’d play with me for hours on end. I didn’t have a real chance to sit and talk to him during the past 9 years for his mind had been taken away, little by little, until the day he couldn’t recognize me or even himself. Even having been deprived from memories of 70 years that had passed by, he could smile with distant eyes, facing uncertainty and the chill that losing memory can bring.
For the first time in my life I heard “He passed away” and I knew who he was. Should I cry, yell, laugh, run away screaming or lay down on my bed? I went upstairs and sat down in front of my laptop as I started working trying not to think about what had happened. Maybe if I just pretended that was just another ordinary day, I would feel ok.
Between shy tears and a little apprehension, I headed to the inevitable destination: the morgue. The funny thing is that I did not hesitate, not even for a split second, and entered that room that smelled like formaldehyde. The place was cold and all the setting looked old and worn-out, weathered and dark. I could hear my steps getting heavier and my breathing deeper as I approached the bed. There he was, all dressed-up and tidy for the last good-bye.
I had never touched or seen a dead body before so I didn’t know what my reaction would be. I promised myself I would go through that experience from beginning to end and I did what I thought I would never do: I kissed him good-bye and felt his freezing cold skin on my lips.
Tears, thousands of them, and I was sobbing like a child: the child he saw in the maternity ward, the child he carried and held against his chest, the grandchild he decided he would raise as his own and love her like a father.
Last night, when I went to bed, I remembered my dead grandfather lying down in the coffin, surrounded by flowers, ready to be carried to his grave. I could feel it in my bones the moment they lowered him to the bottom of his grave and, all of a sudden, the working men did their usual job by setting blocks of concrete on top of him and filling the grave with sand that looked like mud in that rainy and dark day.
Last night I talked to him. I asked him for some fatherly advice on how to deal with life and its shortcomings. I asked him to help me go through some uncertain and scary moments as I shed some tears of fear and love. Every tear shed started to calm me down, as a lullaby I used to be sung to when I was a child and after some minutes I was drowsy, sleepy, calm and ready to rest to wake up on a very beautiful Saturday morning.
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