Normand, who I knew as Moe or Momo, was my grandfather. I grew up with two grandmothers and three grandfathers; two of which belonged to my mother’s side of the family. Growing up, I was told he was a friend of Grammy’s who moved in with her and Grampy.

He wore blue work clothes every day. A button up long sleeve, a pair of trousers, a cap; all a matching medium navy blue. He was a mechanic and maintenance worker who spent many years working in woolen mills around my historic hometown. He loved race cars, tractors, motorcycles, dune buggies and trains; I'm sure his interests didn’t end there. He had a widow’s peak, a small, downward pointing nose, and his old photos showed his youthful, dark hair. He appeared count-like to me as a child. He had a wooden pipe, like Frosty the Snowman, that fascinated me as a child. I still remember the smell.

My family (and I, as much as a young kid can) used to buy him train whistles when we would visit various places - you know, the little wooden blocks you could blow into. He would buy me Hess Toy Trucks for Christmas. He would give me quarters by state, illustrations on the back. “Now hang onto it,” he’d say in his gruff voice, “It’ll be valuable one day.” He left me a trust of a few hundred dollars for when I'd grow older.

Born in March of 1941, he lived to be 76 years old. He had two brothers who I never met. I was told he grew up with a mother who was unwarm and stoic. He lived 50 years in my town, following his return from the military.

He had an affair with my grandmother, of which he fathered his only child. He sacrificed a normal life - a loving wife, a home of his own - to be a close presence in my mother’s life. He spent his life in a chaotic household of seven children and a husband that would never find peace with the affair.

He had a stroke when I was a child, which was followed by two more, along with some heart complications. It became progressively more challenging to understand what he was saying as I got older. As he got older, he grew frustrated and angry being unable to speak among other physical limitations; I remember feeling uncomfortable seeing him in a progressively worse state as I got older, along with the suffering it caused him. I tried to assure him everything was ok. I felt fearful and helpless. He seemed happy when I was young, and I was told he laughed a lot then.

He passed away during my break from college during my sophomore year, which turned out to be the end of my time in school. I remember making a red pen drawing of a vase of flowers, a doily heart, and a cross. I think the flowers were from the funeral; I can’t remember that chaotic time well. The last thing he wore was a blue hospice gown.

I remember sitting in the back of his car listening to country music on the way to do something fun in summer; my grandmother in the passenger seat. I went to Friendly’s once after going to Building #19 with them. He used to order the McDonald’s kiddie meal (I wouldn’t eat it myself) so I could get the toy from it. He had a green chair that was all his in front of the TV, next to my grandmother. The chair has since disappeared, and seeing the new one in its place is enough to feel his overwhelming absence.

I think he liked my dad; he was also a mechanic with an interest in cars and motorcycles. I remember that they got along pretty well, and I'm sure he liked that my father treated his only daughter with respect and love.

Sometimes it feels like I am talking to him in these realer-than-reality dreams, where our conversations are monumental but make sense. I met with a medium who told me that my grandfather is so proud of me and how far I've come following some very rough years when I was younger, and that he loved me so much. What crushed me was his excessive apologizing for his anger and frustration at the end of his life when dealing with his body that was failing him, and for not better protecting my mother from physical abuse by my grandmother’s resentful husband.

I began to feel some of the worst loss I think I've ever felt; imagine the most emotionally-saturated, undeniable loss of the future. It had been about 6 years since his passing, but I felt this all-consuming desire to be close to him. I think that when you’re younger and your brain isn’t fully developed into your mid twenties, you don’t really have the tools to understand the weight of death yet. I texted the medium asking if another reading made sense following reading and the void it created in my sense of closure. She didn’t text me back after that.

I thought about what he and I would look like if he was alive today. Maybe he’d have some hobbies I couldn’t relate to; maybe he’d have some disagreeable political choices; maybe I'd find myself frustrated with him at times. Maybe we’d grow close, and he’d share the stories of his life with me. Maybe he’d be like a second father. I couldn't stop thinking about how I couldn’t really connect with him the way I wanted to as I got older and he became less capable of speech. I couldn’t resolve this, and there is nothing I could have done. I couldn’t have been older, and he couldn’t have been younger.

It’s undoubtedly comfortable to believe that our loved ones can still love and communicate with us after passing in some transcendent-beyond-physical way that surpasses a definitive ending of a life; of a person’s spirit. You may be able to talk to your loved ones again, and they’re never really gone; this isn’t the abrupt, certain end, where your shared experiences will always be limited to what they were. The medium shared that when our loved ones pass, they wait for us on “the other side” (being loosely defined), and that we will have a joyous, beautiful reunion when we pass. It sounds too good to be true, but it’s nice to think that she has special knowledge that happens to provide me some solace.

I guess there’s no way to prove or disprove this comforting idea, and you can’t “know” what happens to our departed loved ones until your life ends, too. I am still alive and will probably continue to live for a while, so I should probably find a way to make peace with the present.