I woke up Saturday morning and he was gone. I heard loud stomping in the hallway going towards my grandparents room. Then the stomping stopped and the screaming began. "No! Dad! Wake up!" I already knew what had happened. My grandpa was dead. I threw off my blanket and opened my door. I couldn't bear to go into the room to see him. I've never had to deal with death before. I've never even seen a dead person. My 9-year-old niece stood in the hallway with a blank face so, I went to her and insisted we go to the kitchen. We could still hear the crying and the screaming, and I wasn't sure how I was supposed to feel. His body was on the other side of the wall but he wasn't there. I was scared but I wasn't sad. Why wasn't I sad? All I felt was fear. But what was I afraid of? I never took death heavily. It wasn't a surprise that my grandpa passed, he had been sick for years. I didn't feel any different now that he was gone.
Every evening after his death there was a rosary at our house. But while that was going on my cousins and I worked on photo collages for his viewing. It brought so many memories back. We heard stories we never knew and found out so much about not only our grandfather but my father and his siblings as well. There was so much more about my grandfather that I never knew. He was funny, he loved to cook, and he did so much for everyone around him. He worked so hard for everything he had and never hesitated to share his wealth with anyone or ask for anything in return. This was my grandfather everyone was speaking about. I've lived with him a majority of my life and didn't know even half of the things he had done for others or even who he really was or used to be. I felt like everyone else had a reason to be sad because they knew my grandpa more than I did. They had more memories of him and losing him was more of a loss to them than it was to me. It made me feel bad that I didn't share his pain because he was just as much my grandpa as he was theirs.