Only Once

I find this to be very strange and unexpected, but this morning, I am thinking about my grandpa. I miss him a lot. Not quite in the sense that I miss his presence (though I do), but I feel like I never quite told him enough times that I love him and am so very grateful that he and grandma came to visit every summer and that he loved us too.

Granted, I had a mother who always urged us kids to go hold grandpa's hand, or kiss him when it's time to wake him up from napping for dinner. I always did it automatically, and I never not wanted to do any of it. But still, I don't think my grandpa deserved those robotic gestures of love. When it was time for them to go back to Taiwan, my mother always lectured us to tell grandma and grandpa that we loved them and that they had to come back next year and that we would miss them so much. As a kid, those were just some words that I was trained to say. I never quite had any freedom in expressing myself to my grandparents, I simply had to recite phrases. Don't get me wrong, I really did love them, but I didn't say it as sincerely as I wished I did. I was merely completing a task that my mother wanted me to do. Even as I got older, I learned these coined phrases and would say them without my mother's instigation, but still really without caring as much as I do now.

I do remember though, this one time that I did say it and meant it, really bad. I had just had a huge fight with "The Favorite One". This is the male cousin who is a real douchebag and mistreats his family, which included a girl cousin I grew quite fond of. I screamed at him and told him off (I actually don't remember what I said) and he said that I had no right to yell at him because he was older than me (and I told him that was dumb and that I didn't have any respect for him).

Right after the whole debacle, I instantly grew very very frightened. I just yelled at "The Favorite One", the One could tell grandma anything, and I could be disowned. Now is sounds really dramatic, but I was seriously quite scared, especially with everything my mother says about the One. I didn't know what I would do without my grandparents. I loved them. So I did what any little girl does when she is scared. I cried. I went directly to my grandpa, who was resting in bed, and I flopped onto the bed and cried into the bedcovers next to him telling him I loved him. (It is really all I could say with my limited Taiwanese, I couldn't exactly speak volumes.) I really didn't know how to say an apology in Taiwanese either, so I said I was sorry (to my grandparents, mind you, not the douchebag!) in English. I wanted my grandpa to know I loved him and I didn't want him out of my life.

He, of course, loved me too. And he took my side. (as he often does. He didn't like The Favorite One either.) Still, I cried and cried while he went off on how spoiled and incompetent the One is. My grandpa really loved me a lot.

I was only told about a week before his funeral was held that he passed. By then, it had been over a month. They had waited for Annie and me to finish school. I was so upset. Before school ended, I went to buy him Frango mints because he loved chocolate so much, and Frango mints were his favorite. I had been looking forward to seeing him and telling him I loved him and hopefully helping him gain his health back.

My sister's boyfriend, Martin, even came to Taiwan with us to support us. He took extensive photos of the event. I'm fairly certain I'm crying waterfalls in all of them, so I don't want to look at them at all. I'm still sorry that I only told him once just how much I love him.