Dear Luki,

Recently your grandma left on a trip. She is trying to rebuild her life, to create new routines, to figure out how to be a functioning, productive human being without your grandpa. It’s hard. I wish you could have seen your grandparents together so that you could understand how much of a close unit they were. How dependent they were on each other. How much they could accomplish together. Without him, your grandma feels like a cripple.

And yet, as disabled and incomplete as she feels, she is taking decisive and significant steps to find a purpose out of this tragedy. She left her home, her comfort zone. She left the place that holds every tangible memory of your grandpa. She left you, the one person that has alleviated her pain more than anyone or anything else.

We keep in constant touch. And she is doing really well. But sometimes, she tells me, she stops to think about how quickly everything changed and it makes her sad. I know how she feels. It breaks my heart to think about what things would be like if that day in November had just been another regular day in November. To imagine your grandpa here, tickling you, singing you songs, putting you to bed at night. The way things were supposed to be. It’s devastating to think about it.

But as I look back at the life we lived with your grandpa, I realize that he always had a profound understanding of how quickly everything can change. Of how invaluable the present is. And he encouraged us, always, to take big, bold steps. His biggest dream was to see us fulfill ours. So, while the wives of other newly arrived immigrants took factory jobs, he encouraged your grandma to go to school. Not later when they had more money or were better situated in the U.S., no, she started school right away. And when she hated her job as a high school teacher, he supported her in becoming a professor. It didn’t matter that she made less money at first, or that she didn’t have the same benefits.

And now, as your grandma faces this daunting task of figuring out life without him, he still has her back. I believe that she left because she knew that he would want her to. Because she learned from him to worry little about “what if” and more about right now.

Because, Luki, right now is all you got.

Love,

Mom