Some people leave, and the world shifts just a little. My grandfather’s passing in 2015 didn’t just shift the world it cracked something open in me that never quite closed again.
He was my father’s father. A man who rose from almost nothing. One of many siblings in a house where even an egg had to be split in parts. One egg. Many mouths. And still he became an engineer. Not because the world made it easy for him, but because he refused to accept the world as it was handed to him.
He was the kind of man who didn’t believe in God, yet I’d catch him whispering to a framed photo of his mother late at night. Everyone, I’ve come to realize, needs something to believe in. He chose love. He chose memory. He chose grit.
He believed in women, too. In my mother. In me. He pushed my mother to study, even when the environment at home wasn’t always supportive. He was the one who picked up government job application forms for her. Who took her to coaching classes. Who insisted she make something of herself on her own terms. And I think in doing that, he taught me what true belief looks like: it’s quiet, persistent, unwavering.
He spoke to me in English, correcting me with care, not with mockery. He told people about me with pride, as if I were some astonishing discovery. The kind of praise he gave me you can’t forget that. It stitched itself into my self-worth. He built me up in ways I didn’t even understand at the time. Maybe I still don’t.
He was the one who introduced me to Citizen Kane, the House of Wax (Old One). Who brought Iranian and Turkish dramas into my orbit before anyone else was watching them. He gave me books, stories, curiosity. He showed me what it meant to dream with no blueprint.
And now, I wear his ring. A plain gold circle, nothing fancy, but it feels like armor. Like legacy. Like love that never fades, even when the person is gone.
I don’t think I’ll ever love someone the way I loved him. I don’t think I have to. Because I am, in so many ways, a reflection of him. His stubbornness. His wonder. His hunger for knowledge. His quiet defiance.
When people say we carry our ancestors within us, I believe them. I carry mine in my voice, in my dreams, in every small triumph I try to reach for. I carry him in the way I speak, the way I write, the way I walk into a room believing I belong.
He didn’t leave me. He lives here. In me. Always.
