Chapter 12: Grandpa

What I feared most happened, and I was on the other side of a Skype call, tears streaming down my face, seconds after I heard this: "We don't have good news, azizam!". My mom told me that she, my dad and my brother all wanted to Skype with me that night since they were all in. And here I was, in my apartment, making myself breakfast, chopping the grapes to go with the bread and the cheese, when my mom said it.

What she said was enough for me to understand what has happened. I looked up from the plate of grapes, looked at them all and asked: "It happened?" as if I needed a confirmation, as if I still had a small ray of hope. I knew better to wait for an answer.

I cried and thought that's it, that's my biggest fear ever since I moved to the US coming true. I don't have anything else to lose. All that enthusiasm for going back to Iran died in me at once. I just couldn't see a reason why I would want to go back now. Everything was different all of a sudden, all that I felt, all that I looked forward to. I cried and cried, not just because I wasn't there. But because I had lost him, an important part of my life, a key to my childhood, forever. The last piece of my life, that connected me to that happy, carefree child was gone. My last grandparent alive.

I've been thinking about him a lot since yesterday when I received that dreadful piece of news. I think about how he used to hug me, and put his hands around my face and kissed both my cheeks. I remember all those Court Piece games that we played and I won, and that one time we played Pasur and he won. "Let's play Court Piece, you are no good at this!" he told me. And I loved him for that, for always speaking his mind. 

I still can't believe it has happened. That my dad went to give him a shower the day before and my grandpa asked him: "Who was that little girl washing me when I was taking a shower?". I don't want to believe that the next time I'm in Tehran, the first thing I would want to do is to go see him, but not at his room, where we sat and played card games for hours, but at Behesht-e-Zahra, where he is resting forever in peace right next to my grandma. And right there lie the last two pieces... .