I always want to shut my ears when someone talks about their grandparents, especially their grandfather. Maybe it’s because I don’t have them. That’s what I told myself when I was a kid. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t relate. That’s what I told myself when I was a teenager. Maybe it’s because I couldn’t change the past. That’s what I told myself today.

The past me always looked in awe at kids who talked about their grandparents buying them this and that, giving them allowances and hugging them hard, cooking them their favorite dishes, telling them all the random funny and dumb things their parents did, sculpting their childhood with their love.

Today, I was at my mom’s hometown, where the house that couldn’t be saved by the eight children lies as a random building. My dad showed me a sweet stall and said that’s where my grandpa used to go every evening. My mom, over the phone, said how Grandpa would take her along with him and buy her “Halwa” sweet. I yearned to fit myself somewhere. I couldn’t be a witness. I couldn’t be someone who experienced my grandfather’s warmth. All I could do was to savor the sweet from the same shop where he loved to eat. I got some halwa while my dad asked about my grandfather to the store owner. He remembered him. I ate the halwa and squeezed myself into a place where his traces were bound in the past. I didn’t show it, but I cried inside. I cried so hard inside. A part of me said, “hold it, hold it, hold it. You are an adult. Some people don’t even have parents. Hold it”.

But what can I do, when it has been paining me since I was a kid? It hurts when you yearn for someone who you haven’t seen and couldn’t see. Futile. Hopeless.

For me that someone has always been my grandfather…