The reader who left me

Before you learn how to write you must learn how to read. It is a basic principle we can hardly remember since those two skills have become so natural within our lives that we never really think about how we acquired them. Some people just become such naturals at reading while some try to become authors to the stories the prior will enjoy. He was a reader, I am a writer.

I once knew a man who devoured books in the most gentle and kind way. Now that I think about it, I don’t know if devouring is the right term, since he would enjoy every bite, he would even share whatever was inside them with me, leaving the best pieces for us to split. He never shared the crumbs, he always shared the most savory bits of every page. 

As a kid I always wondered, would he ever become a book? There was nothing philosophical in my young assumption, I had just heard the phrase “we are what we eat » at school that same morning. At the time, I was relieved that the old man sitting on the reading couch of our living room was still there after every book he ate. 

He would always seek the best ray of light to help him see while he was enlightening his mind. The sun coming through the window would always gleam brightly in his grayish hair,  almost making it seem completely white. I am starting to think those same rays gave him the little brown dots in his steady hands, they were like constellations you could connect while he was holding the covers that kept the pages of his reads alive.

He could sit for hours in the same spot, with the same book, until it was over and he had to find his next companion. I knew something was wrong the day I went to meet my reader at the hospital,  he told me he didn’t want me to go home and bring him the only book he never got to finish. He was truly faithful to his books through the course of their relationship, having the emotional responsibility to go over all they had to tell, even when he wasn’t happy about the direction they took. He never said it out loud, he forgot how to speak and open his honey glazed eyes in his last hours, but a hunch tells me he didn’t like the course his last chapter took. I didn’t like it either, and what hurt the most was that I couldn ́t rewrite the last minutes of our time together. 

He no longer sits on his couch, I can no longer count the dots in his hands, I can no longer see the gray in his hair, I can no longer hear his voice telling me about the stories he just read. He can no longer hold a book in his hands, he can no longer hear about the plots inside my head. I can only hope God has some kind of celestial library in that place we call heaven so the man that used to sit on a couch in my living room can still be the reader I met.

 None of his past companions left  his bookcase to join him in his walk towards the light, that wooden box that cares for his eternal hours of sleep wasn’t meant to hold the words and sentences that made him the remarkable man he was. When he stopped reading, a part of me stopped writing, I was paralyzed by heartbreak, I realized some endings are inevitable and that some plots are way beyond our understanding. I couldn’t even find the right words to create the eulogy he deserved, it was as if he took all my words at the same time he took a piece of my heart.

The days went by and in the most difficult of times I finally understood he had been a book all along, a book who always kept enough blank pages to write stories with me even though it meant giving up the few pieces of paper it had left, the ones that were meant for the final remarks of his main character moments.

I realized he was a book so timeless, even after its pages stopped being written, he was more alive than ever. His story went on to become a word of mouth tale that would continue for as long as the people who loved him roam the Earth. Even though he now resides in the highest of bookshelves very close to God himself, some words, phrases and anecdotes we shared stayed with me, because without me ever noticing, he had written them deep inside my heart, in a place I found until he was gone. I wasn’t the only writer in the family after all,

I spent our first days apart wondering when I would be granted the chance to follow him and continue writing the stories we shared, but the wooden ladder that could help me get up there was still being built, in fact, it is still being built since it is not my time to be in the topshelf next to all eternal books. At least not yet.

Even though I have taken up the courage to hold up the pen again I still wonder how I am supposed to write certain stories without him.

I have plenty of ink, I can decide among an array of paper but it still hurts to know he can only be a spectator in the stories I hoped he would be a main character. The one where he walks me down the aisle, the one where he counts how far apart his age is from my first child’s age, the one where I can hug him one last time, the one where I can tell him how much I actually loved him, the one where we can have a proper goodbye. The one where we get to write a deserved ending for such a magnificent book that now lives in the corner of Heaven´s top shelf.

I still wonder if I was able to write the proper stories in his heart, the ones that could keep my memory alive for as long as we are kept a million miles apart from each other. Were they the happy stories? Were they the hurting ones? Did I write enough or was I too distraught trying to foretell my future plots that I carelessly forgot that the best book in the world had given up some of its last blank spaces just so I could write stories with him.

 After all, he wasn’t only my grandfather, he had lovingly self-appointed himself as my dad even though we were biologically two generations apart and only traces of his blood ran through my veins. Since the day the first word of my story was written on that unexpected July night, he decided I was going to become his fifth child, stepping in to become the best father figure I could have hoped for. Even though he had long finished that difficult task of raising his own, even though the years had gone by taking with them his strength and vitality, he never hesitated to take my hand and guide me through the story we all call life.

No other book can take his place in my story. Whenever I feel the void, that empty space in my heart and soul, I truly understand the meaning of “ a good book can change your life”. He transformed me in countless ways, he crafted my character with his example, he molded me to take up some of his best qualities, he enlightened me with patience and care, he was the support I needed to become my own person. The only thing he forgot to teach me was what life without him would feel like. That is something I am figuring out every day. 

Now everytime a ray of sunshine comes through the window behind his old reading couch, I like to believe it is him trying to tell me that I should keep writing tirelessly and without fear until the day the great editor of the universe lets me become a book next to him and all the familiar books that have reached that top shelf before me. George was the reader who left me, the father who loved me and the most inspiring man I ever had the pleasure of meeting.

-Andrea Lucía @meetmywords

George´s proud grandaughter