What? Where?!

I know I think (self-contradiction?) I wrote about this little ditty I'm about to write about before, but I feel compelled to mention it all over again. I mean, what if I didn't you know? I could be passing up literary gold here for all I know.

As I was working tonight, a simple little thought came into my head: Where in the hell is the time going in such a bloody hurry? I swear it was just December yesterday, then January popped up not long after that and then BAM!! There goes February like a speeding bullet and March is gone like a bat outta hell...

The thought that scares me even more then that is the fact that it has been almost ten years since I graduated from high school!! Ten whole frikkin' years!!! I know I sort of freak out every time I think about it and tonight was no different!

There must be some kind of explanation for all of this! Am I losing my mind? Am I?? Did I miss something in school about how time just starts to pick up speed and just does not let up on the throttle? Next thing I'll know, I'll be an old man already!

With my mind going off into a time panic, my brain started to remember some things from back in the day. God, my grandparents have been gone for so long already...

It isn't all that easy for me to walk through the downtown area. When I was a kid, my grandparents would walk from my uncle's condo, down to Fort Street Mall. Back then, I used to think the walk was the longest walk I had ever taken. These days, eh... minor...

Even crossing the street by Nordstrom brings back memories for me about my grandparents. Here comes yet another story from back in my kid days...

We (myself and my grandparents) were walking across the street with my grandpa in the front and me in the back with my grandma. Well as luck would have it, my grandma took a spill in the middle of the crosswalk. Did my grandpa stop to help her up? Nope! He was so focused on walking that he got across and was a fair distance away before he realized we weren't following (would you believe that NO ONE that passed my fallen grandma, stopped to even bother to check if she was OK?).

And yet another story! This story actually took place in Kona, but thinking about her trip up in Oahu always reminds me of this one.

During the few years of my grandma's life, she had to go to the hospital more and more frequently. Well on one particular occasion, she wasn't feeling all that great and so my mom advised her to make the trip up to the hospital to check things out.

So while they are preparing to leave, my mom and myself decide to take a ride over there to make sure everything was OK. Well as we were pulling in, there is my grandpa in the car, driving away. And WHO emerges from the darkness of the night?

My poor grandma.

Luckily, we got her in our car and we sort of tailed my grandpa up to the hospital. Needless to say, I just wish I had a picture of the expression on his face when he parked the car and took a look at the backseat, only then did he realize that something or someone was missing!

But my grandpa was cool and much, much more knowledgeable then I could have ever imagined. If it weren't for him, I may not have gotten my driver's license when I did. It was one of those rare moments where he imparted to me a small slice of knowledge. Basically he said why wait? We can go and get it now and you won't have to worry about it later.

Heh, my parents were quite surprised to learn that I had gotten my license without them. On the flip side, the price of him taking me down to get my license was that I had to drive him to the grocery store at least once and week and take him to get his hair cut every now and then. That was price I gladly paid because that time spent with him gave me a much better understanding of the man I had originally grown up fearing!

And I'll never forget his last birthday party, man was it something else! It was sad too, however, because by this time he was suffering from what is called "Sun Downers" (I have no idea of what the official name of it is), which basically means when the sun begins to set, his mind gets all weird. He would get confused and it was just a mess...

But that night, oh that night he was entirely himself the whole way through. Hell, he even drank a few beers and sang a Japanese song, as well as a Hawaiian song too! Most of the people in attendance (myself included) had never heard him sing before, much less knew he could sing Hawaiian songs!

Thinking back to those days does make me sad in a way, just because of the fact that I feel a small tug of regret. I know I shouldn't, because there is nothing I can do to change what has already come and gone. But I do wish I spent more time, asked a few more questions and just...

Yeah.

It is a uncomfortable feeling to experience, to lose a loved one you'd never think would ever not be there. The world gets a little quieter, life gets a little sadder. And all a person has left are the memories.


I think with my grandma, what I miss the most was being her Majong partner or her Paiute partner or even her Hanafuda partner. She taught me how to play so she could take me with her and I'd fill in when she played with her friends and they were short a player. Then there were days when we'd play cards at their house and she'd bring out a jar of pennies, to use for betting. What I didn't know back then was we were just playing and I wasn't suppose to take the coins!

Going even further back in time, hell she was a grandma like no other. She would actually want to go to places like Fun Factory. And she'd play and we would all (all of us grand kids) would end up fighting with her over the prizes. The same went for McDonalds Happy Meal toys. If she wanted it, man... it was going to be a long day!

With my grandpa, I'd have to say it was taking him grocery shopping for the first time. For all the years, my grandma had done the shopping for him. But here he was, in the grocery store to face the perils alone.

Let me tell you this: That man shopped like no other! I believe he racked up a $100+ bill, I mean he went to town in there! I almost thought he was stocking up for a few months in advance or something. What was cool was over the months that followed, he began to change his ways and I think then he realized why my grandma always kept the sale ads all the time.

The funny part of all this grocery shopping with him was how he'd asked. He would never, ever ask me directly. Instead, he'd show up at our house (we were next door neighbors) and tell either my mom, step dad or both of them, he need something or another. That was the signal: He needed to take a trip to the store.

Wow, a thousand apologizes... I wasn't expecting to write this much. I guess I am thinking a whole lot more then I realized. In a way, I think the main reason why I never got home sick was because home was far, far away from my mind when I moved out. The only thing that really broke my heart was hearing about how my grandpa's condition was only getting worse as the months drew on.

But I don't think anything could have compared to the pain in that man's heart, after losing his wife of over 50 years. While he never showed it to the world, I heard from my mom how heartbroken he was after her passing. It was so much so that he didn't even want to take the framed pictures of he and my grandma together.

The morning she passed away was the very first time I had ever seen my grandpa kiss my grandma. Just by witnessing that, along with the pain on his face and the sorrow in his eyes, convinced me that day that I may never know what love truly is. That was real and unlike a lot of marriages and relationships today, that was truly meant for a lifetime.