Love at First Night

Chapter 109 – Letter

[TW letter, grieving]

[this chapter do not contain plot development and is an homage, you can skip it if you want]

I hold the pen tightly as I gazed at the paper tightening my eyes and trying to squeeze the tears out in a last desperate attempt of crying.

I failed one more time.

I was left alone with myself, with my heart sitting in the chair in front of me ready to be devasted and destroyed from the forthcoming encounter with the past.

I wrote a few times to my grandfather but I stopped when it became too hard to deal with my emotions.

Maybe it was time to write a third letter, maybe it would help.

I leaned the pen closer to the white paper and as soon as the pen touched the paper and the ink came out, my hand began trembling.

I could feel the sadness inside me, the deepest worst sadness, the kind of sadness that put roots over your heart and dragged it away from your chest.

I could feel my eyes already burning at the thought of writing to my grandfather again.

The pen suddenly grew higher, sending strokes all around my body. My bones ached in grief and I had the urge to let the pen down and shook my head.

I wasn't strong enough to do that. I wasn't strong enough to write to him now. Just like I wasn't strong enough to accept his death and I will never be.

A lump burned through my throat, I gathered the courage back and finally took the pen. Holding it, squeezing the cold steel.

"Dear grandpa,

I wonder if you can see me from the darkness of the sky, I even wonder what you think of me.

I know that you're proud of me because you always were proud of me even for the smallest things.

But I need to see you, I need to hear your voice, I need to feel your warm touch on me.

It's hard without you.

I still remember the day you died, the same day God decided he needed one more angel in the sky. But little did he know that I needed you to be my angel more than he needed you. Little did he know that he wasn't simply taking you away from me, but he was also taking my heart, my happiness, and my entire world included in the package.

You died because of a terrible illness. And if there is even a glimpse of justice in this world then I wonder why the most amazing kindest person in the world deserved to be ill.

The SLA illness deprived you slowly day after day to the point that you could barely move your hands or your legs or every other muscle. I died a little in concomitance with your muscles every time I saw you hurting. The SLA disorder never succeeded in breaking our connection, not even stopping it. And even if sometimes you were angry at life for targetting you and the disorder made your mood swing and warned you out too much. You always found time for me, to listen to my boring yapping and for hugging me. The illness even tried to break our unbreakable bond by impeding you to move your arms. But we still hugged. I lifted your arms and wrapped them around my shoulders. Then you remained still, bending your head slightly as I embraced you. 

May the illness, that damn, cursed, hellish illness have failed to separate us, but death succeeded in breaking the shatterproof relationship.

Because you're not here anymore.

And since you left me, I am alone. Even if I have everyone in my life, none of those people compare to you.

The lump in my throat is so big and unmanageable that all the tears I had never cried are stuck in it.

I remember the day of your death so vividly, the worst day of my life. I walked to the kitchen as soon as I heard my grandmother cry, hoping that it was a dream only to find out it was the worst nightmare happening in real life.

When they told me about your death, my entire world fell apart and I froze, I rose from the ground and the voices around me faded away, I couldn't see anymore, nor could I hear them. The only noise I could manage to hear was the drumming of my heartbeat, at each beat a stab in my chest hitting my heart and turning it in shatters.

Tears fell down my face uncontrollably and my breath shortened, my hands tingled and I began to tremble. I couldn't even breathe. God damn, how I wished I died that day. I knew how bad it is to say that kind of thing but I did. I still do now when I grieve, because at least dying I would see you. 

The day of your death, I had my first panic attack, which is reductive compared to the tumultuous mixture of feelings I had that day. 

I am selfish granny because even if the illness was draining you out, I still would have asked for more days, more months, or even years to spend with you. And I knew you thought the same. 

I still remember when we talked about death, you never wanted to talk about that because just like me you thought that ignoring the problem setting it aside would have steered it away.

I told you that I wished to die earlier than you, just because I was sure that my heart wouldn't have endured the pain, that the pain would have turned my heart off as a broken tv. And to be honest, I wasn't wrong, because that's what happened in the first months after your death. And I can still say that the big side of my heart had never turned on since then.

For how much I loved you, grandfather, I hate myself to the deepest point because I sometimes think I don't honor my love enough- and still hate myself for that. I even wonder how I can manage to live and even sometimes forget about you if you were my only reason and the main source of happiness for so long.

This letter is to tell you that I am still alive, some days surviving other days barely living, and even other days living to the fullest without you.

And that I will still do.

But life is not the same, the sky is not as bright as it was when I looked at it with you and the night is not as dark as the nights we slept hugging in the same bed. My smiles are not as sincere as they used to be when those were reserved for you. And I am not the same, because you still own a part of me, the lighthearted, genuinely happy, and joy-filled part of me. 

I am not asking to have that part of me back, because that part will always be yours since it belongs to you.

I love you with all my heart, and I miss you will all the tears I both had and hadn't cried.

Goodbye, 

your loved granddaughter.

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Author's thought: Please do not comment this chapter if you want to criticize the letter, because I wrote this letter with the bottom of my heart and the things I had mentioned are real and inspired by my amazing relationship with my grandfather. Which soon will be 4 years of his death so I wanted to dedicate him this chapter. 

I love you so much, grandpa.. This letter is for you.