An Essay About Loss

and lemonade

Loss is like a dream inside of a dream inside of a dream. Without a thing in your life that has been a part of it since you were born, your world becomes a shrunken, carbon-copy of your previous one. I lost a set of keys to my apartment and haven't been able to get into my mailbox. I’m adapting to my smaller, new world. When they show up in a pocket of my jeans that I forgot to wear for a season or behind my couch braided in cat hair maybe my world will expand a little bit again. I’ll get to see all of the letters that have been locked away and open up a package that contains a skirt I forgot I ordered. Losing something tangible means nothing after you lose a person, though. I watched Inception on a plane ride back home after losing my grandpa. Can you tell? I hope you can’t. I am trying to be original.

Papa and I were not great friends. I remember seeing him every Christmas when my family would take our annual holiday road trip down South to see both sides of my parents’ families. My dad’s dad was straight-forward, particular, and smart. He liked Turkey Hill lemonade, sweet tea, and he always had animal crackers in his pantry. He wanted German chocolate cake on his birthday and for lunch he ate sandwiches with mayonnaise on soft white bread with a side of salty potato chips. The sugar he ate didn’t make him any sweeter, except to my nana, who he had been married to since he was 18, I think. He liked to collect wooden mallard ducks and mini sports cars with moveable doors and wheels that spun. He wouldn’t let you touch them, though, and although his office didn’t have a door and practically begged you to come in and steal a car or a mallard for one of your Barbies, Papa could always tell if you moved them so it was never worth the risk.

Papa mumbled when he talked, and towards the end I could tell that it was because he was in pain, and repeating a sentence a little louder was too hard, not because he didn’t like repeating himself, which he didn’t, but because it was worth more to catch his breath than try to make you understand him again. His throat hurt, and he couldn’t swallow right. Even when he was eating a sandwich and sipping lemonade. When I was little he mumbled because he expected you to listen closely, and mumbled even more when he was saying something biting or offensive, so basically, you could never really understand him. If you could, though, you’d realize how funny he was. I would try to understand him as a little girl, but I was afraid of him until I was in high school. I remember making a school project about my family history for biology my freshman year. I called my mom’s parents first, thinking that the funny stories and rich memories they talked about again and again would make for a good report and an easy Punnett square-making process, and it did, but there was a lot that was forgotten or unknown, and my mom got her parents ancestry test kits for Christmas that year. At the end of the week, after having left the fate of an A on my project in both sets of grandparents’s hands, I got a letter in the mail from Carroll. I always forget my grandpa has such a funny name, I think as I rip the note open while I walk back inside. Papa wrote me a 6-page letter about his family history, his name, his father and mother and included clips of every news article, wedding announcement, and pieces of documentation that proved my ancestor’s existence. I don’t know why I didn’t go over to his house and ask him about it all. We didn’t live far from each other after my mom moved us to Georgia for work, but I wasn’t speaking to anybody much around that time, and I had braces and fake blonde hair. What would I say to him? We don’t sit down and have chats. That’s not how he and I behave together. I think he knew it, too, when Nana explained the project I called her about. As much as I wish I hadn’t thought that way about our relationship, Papa wrote beautifully, thoughtfully, with a voice I had never heard while sitting in a room with him. We didn’t talk about his family history after that project, and I never asked him to tell me about it in person or show me pictures of his mom. Every time I’d visit my grandparents’s house, though, I’d always sneak off and explore the ins and outs of each bedroom. I found closets with suitcases and bins in their basement with picture frames and photo albums that must have contained thousands of snapshots of every moment he and my nana lived. The special moments were framed and nailed to the walls symmetrically, but pictures of their life together before they lived in a big house in Georgia always took a little bit more effort to uncover. In them, Papa always had a toothy smile that I didn’t see much when I was around him and he looked healthily heavier. All of his favorite foods stuck to his bones in the 70s and 80s. Nana has always been teeny-tiny, but she looked a lot taller then since her pixie cut was teased and hair-sprayed to extend at least two inches higher than she styles it to stand now. 

When I was in high school, Papa started giving me checks for Christmas. I didn’t understand them. Until I worked at an ice cream shop and saw how criminal taxes are to an already-minimal minimum wage, I had only ever dealt with cash and prepaid Visa gift cards. When I’d leave it in the back of my bedside table drawer for months, Papa would call my dad and ask him to remind me to deposit my check. I never understood how he knew, but Papa has always been good with numbers and keeping track of things. That’s why he had such a big office and such cool calculators and a label maker, which I wasn’t allowed to touch either, but did anyways when I got the chance. I labeled his desktop ‘COMPUTER’ and his stapler ‘STAPLER’ and his label maker ‘LABEL MAKER’ (in case he forgot). He would mumble about it at lunch or dinner and they’d be unstuck and gone by the next visit. 

Papa called me smart and beautiful before he died. I remember so distinctly because he had never said that to me before. Sometimes my nana would tell me how much I had grown up, or ask my dad if he thought I looked like my sister as much as she did, and then accidentally call me by my sister’s name. Nana likes me best with long, shiny, styled hair and clothes that fit well. She, my sister and I used to go shopping in department stores after the holidays to use up our Christmas money, even though I know she’d always treat me to a pair of pants or a top that I just had to have because they looked so good. She always picks out the best clothes, towels and bedding. Her eye for quality was subtle but masterful. I think she has learned to pick the best things after many years of trial and error. We ate at Cracker Barrel once and she pointed to this hand-carved wooden statue of a band of horses. She was in a horse-phase of decorating at the time, and it would go well with the others, she explained. I picked out a mini stool made of wood. I loved it because it was very small. It came in a container labelled ‘STOOL SAMPLE’. I didn’t get the joke. Papa let us buy both. That statue was gone by the next visit, too, but finding it in their basement later made me realize how much he loved her. In their basement were her collections of themed plates and bunny trinkets, monkey ceramics and other bits of horse decor. When they moved out of that house, it became Atlanta’s new Home Goods for a few weekends. Maybe Nana got Papa the collection of mallards and cars and that’s why I wasn’t allowed to touch them.

He still had a few in his office at the nursing home. I could see how the two spaces were made by the same couple. I saw parallels in the photos on the wall at the home and the ones that used to hang in the room I slept in at Nana and Papa’s. The bath towels at the home were still thick and soft. There is a bar in their bathroom to help you stand up. There is padding and a stool in the shower. There are items in the drawers for emergencies and Papa would tell me how bad the food there was. 

He had a hard time chewing the sandwich my sister, my mom and I brought him on our way down to Georgia that Christmas. My parents aren’t together anymore so my mom hadn’t seen the two in years, but we found another letter he wrote to my mom once about him and Nana and I think she wanted to tell him about it. The sandwich bread was too tough, I think. He had trouble swallowing, remember? I asked him to tell us the funny story about the lady who hogs the front seat on the home’s Friday-outing bus. That was the one day a week my nana and papa would get to eat outside of the nursing home with the other residents, and Papa had a lot to say about the woman who owned the front seat of the bus (in her mind). Papa looked so skinny. He lost his class ring that he had since he graduated from college in Tennessee. He thought someone took it, but his fingers look so skinny compared to those photos from the 70s that used to be in his basement.

I think Nana’s world is smaller this year, without Papa and her twin sister June. I think when Papa lost his class ring his world got smaller for a few weeks, but my dad got him an exact replica for his birthday and his world rebuilt itself again. I think since Nana lost Papa and June, her world isn’t able to do that. When we brought the two those sandwiches, Nana had to stop herself from eating both halves. She doesn’t have as much trouble speaking, and her face is still round and bright. I noticed that there are dark purple bruises up and down her arms and she told me they come out of nowhere. She makes jokes about her bruises. She had to ask Papa to repeat himself or ask us to translate for him. I could understand him sometimes. Nana had to be the funny one towards the end. I will miss Papa when I see lemonade and sweet tea. I will miss him when I mumble. I will miss him when I see a mallard duck. I will miss him when I look at Nana. I used to think this horrible thing: that, since my nana on my mom’s side was cranky sometimes, and I thought Dutchie, my mom’s dad, never was, that my grandparents should swap wives. 

Papa was the sweetest writer I have ever known. I can’t imagine him sitting beside anyone but my nana. Carroll and Jean. 

I will find my house keys again someday, but my world will never be as big as it was before Papa.