A Decade Apart…

April 11^th, 2024 marked 10 years since my Grandpa’s passing. There are times where it’s easy to accept the reality that he’s gone, but there are times where it’s not. And those moments seem more frequent lately.

His passing wasn’t a surprise even if it was sudden. His health had been declining for several years and in January of 2014, he was rushed to the hospital because he had trouble breathing. That’s when they discovered a mass they believed to be cancerous. Based off of its perceived growth rate, the doctor gave a timeframe of 1-2 years of life left. But the cancer grew faster than they predicted and not even 3 months later, he was gone.

For many people, the passing of a grandparent is still sad, maybe even tragic, but not necessarily devastating. For my siblings and me, though, our Grandpa was one of the few stable father figures we’ve ever had – and for my older brother and me, he was the only father figure. It would take years to sift through the emotional turmoil I was thrust into in the wake of his passing, and I don’t think I’ll ever be done with the process. It’s like an injury suffered years ago that still requires physical therapy to manage the pain.

But I think I have the cause of the turmoil mostly figured out. For many orphans, there’s the stigma that we all have abandonment issues that cause us to become possessive and controlling over the people we love. Or we totally close ourselves off from the people around us so that we don’t get hurt again. All of this, we’re told as orphans, is because our parents left us and now we have this deeply seated insecurity, and we’ll always struggle with relationships.

Hardly any of this was ever true for me. Evangelicalism compelled me to internalize that narrative; that I’ll only ever find true fulfillment in God as my “real Father.” But the more I tried to believe it, the less emotionally stable I became. For a while I rationalized this as the Spirit “convicting” me and that to find true healing, I just had to have these emotional breakdowns a bunch. Eventually I’d be healed and living a full life dedicated to Jesus.

When you’re in the thick of evangelicalism, it’s not the community that holds it all together. It’s the cognitive dissonance. It’s the compulsion to believe a particular narrative regardless of the evidence in front of you. Starting with the base assumptions of the Bible being perfectly true and everything being within God’s plan, one could confidently reject any contradictory evidence because God does not mislead His children.

Watching my grandfather’s skin turn from a dusty pale to a ghastly yellow as all the air left his body and he became eerily still – this obliterated any cognitive dissonance I may have had. There was no going back to what I had left behind. Because it hadn’t been any abandonment issue that caused this pain; it was an all-encompassing loneliness. It was like I couldn’t breathe because I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next. Grandpa was supposed to live long enough to see me graduate my Master’s program and maybe even see me get married. He wasn’t supposed to go this soon.

When you don’t have what most of your classmates have in the way of parents, you cherish what you do actually have. But there was a part of me that, because everyone else’s dads were a key part of their adult lives well into their 30s and 40s, believed I’d be able to have that, too. Despite the orphan part. In my mind, because he had been there through pretty much every key event any normal kid might have, I didn’t really think of myself as an orphan. And then he was gone, and I was reminded all over again, and alone all over again – just like that time when I was taken from my birth mother in the back of a cop car and dropped off with some stranger whose kids were bullies.

That was the core of the turmoil. My Grandpa had been my anchor when I was left adrift and his passing, though expected for literal decades, was like the tether snapping apart and I was immediately sucked into an emotional maelstrom. If it hadn’t been for my older brother, I don’t really know where I’d be right now. But I know that if I had tried to stay within evangelicalism, I would never have escaped that maelstrom.

I also know that whatever turmoil I may have suffered in the immediate wake of my Grandpa’s passing was far better than the absolute shitstorm he kept me and my siblings from. All things considered, he gave us a sense of peace and stability, which enabled a relatively normal childhood. We never went hungry, always had clothes (even if they weren’t always new), and we never had to wonder where we’d sleep each night. Through meeting these basic necessities, my Grandpa gave us a chance to dream.

And being able to dream feels like a superpower in a world of nightmares.

Father’s Day Reflections…

            I know, I’m a week late, but this feeling didn’t really hit until late Sunday night and it wasn’t until Monday morning when I felt I could express what this feeling even was. In years past, this day was difficult because it always reminded me of what I didn’t have: someone I could call “dad.” In my case, what created more of an emotional strain for me was the fact that I received my brown skin from my biological dad. Everyone else in my known family is white, so I didn’t have someone I could look up to for guidance through the white world as a brown man. Heck, apart from The Fresh Prince, I had no role model at all who could talk to me about racism.

But a little over six years ago, my replacement father passed away. In January of 2014, his doctors discovered a mysterious cancerous mass in his lungs (their words, not mine), and he was originally expected to live close to two years beyond that point. But it grew exponentially worse in a short amount of time and on April 8^th, I received a call from my older brother saying our replacement dad had been rushed to the hospital in critical condition. Only a few days later, April 11^th around 8pm, my older brother and I watched as he breathed his last.

            What this experience showed me was that while my grandfather could not be a father to me in every way, there were many ways where he provided the fathering that I needed. He taught me how to write a check, drive a car, and file my taxes. He taught me to thank the people who do favors for me even if they’re paid to do it – often leaving a nicer-than-usual tip. And while there had been many moments where he was unreasonably harsh with me or my older brother, he was one of the few people in my life who taught me that compassion isn’t a weakness, but that naïveté is.

            In his absence, I’ve graduated from one Master’s program and started another. I’ve gotten engaged to the most amazing woman I have ever met. I’ve officiated both my brothers’ weddings, and am now an uncle to two nieces and two nephews. I’ve seen the love he shared with me and my siblings emanate through my older brother and youngest sister to their children – I’ve seen his imprint loving on who would have been his great grandchildren (the oldest of whom where born the same year he passed away). I’ve relished every second of the time spent with my nieces and nephews because those are the moments I get to practice what my grandpa, my replacement dad, taught me.

            What I feel now in relation to Father’s Day is a sense of deep sadness of what could have been. It tears me up he won’t get to meet my fiancé, or see what I’ve accomplished since college. It hurts like nothing else that I can’t ask him for financial advice, or just have someone to vent to about work, school, or just life. What I felt before was a sense of bitterness toward my bio dad – why couldn’t have an ounce of courage to stick around? But what I feel now is simply the pain of not being able to share life with the man who took us in when we didn’t even know which way was up.

And it hurts. It really fucking hurts. The comic I drew below is an attempt to display that kind of pain and loss. Beyond this comic, though, I have been working on a creative retelling of life with my grandpa and maybe at some point I’ll be able to post it here. But the thing about what I feel that I couldn’t really express in this comic is that my life isn’t about what I could have had even if I believe I should have had it. I won’t suddenly get the stereotypical father-son experience of life simply by recognizing that my bio father shouldn’t have left. Instead, because of what my grandpa did, my nieces and nephews can now have the kinds of parents we should have had. My youngest sister is one of the strongest, most tenacious mothers I’ve ever known, and my older brother is one of the most patient, nurturing fathers I’ve ever seen. The best parts of our grandfather live on through them.

This isn’t to mitigate the pain I feel when thinking about my grandpa. It’s to balance that pain with the joy of what I do have. And if or when my fiancé and I have children of our own, I’ll have an abundance of role models (my grandpa, my brother, my sister) to guide me through parenting. And that’s a gift I never expected to receive.

“Happy Father’s Day, Grandpa.”