My dead grandpa talks to me through a picture. In the picture he wears a black, oversized sweater. The exposed brick wall of the kitchen is behind him. It\u2019s a picture of us, he\u2019s holding me, as a baby, on his lap. I\u2019ve got orange food on my white sweater.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s weird that he moves and I don\u2019t. I\u2019m frozen in a wet mouthed giggle while he\u2019s in motion behind me. Grandpa didn\u2019t always move. He used to sit on the frame of my bedroom wall and like every other picture, he was frozen and silent. Then, on an unassuming Wednesday afternoon, in my empty apartment while I ate the sushi I had ordered from my phone, he said, \u201cThat\u2019s the fourth time you ordered out this week.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I spent a couple of weeks of thinking I was crazy, pushed over the edge from hours in solitude thanks to a pandemic or something. I contemplated putting the picture in a box and driving it three hours to my grandma\u2019s basement. It felt fitting, it used to be his favorite place. It was mine too at times when my parents left me for days, weeks, or months on end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn\u2019t lock him away to collect dust in my grandma\u2019s basement. If I really was crazy it felt wrong to punish his picture for my insanity. I got used to him, though. Since he died when I was five, I didn\u2019t exactly know him well. I learned that he\u2019s stuck inside the mental space of the moment the picture was taken. Apparently, he\u2019d had bad pains in his back that day and he still never shuts up about it. He\u2019d also just gotten into an argument with grandma, so he wasn\u2019t her biggest fan. The argument was about how much money she spent on things he didn\u2019t seem to think was necessary. I don\u2019t know if he was always so frugal, or just extra sensitive because of the argument, but he is very critical of my spending habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Many times, I wish I could cover the picture and block him out or something, but I know the guilt would eat away at me. He only wants to talk, after all, and he told me I made bad days better. The picture was taken on a bad day. The day was bad because something had triggered his PTSD. He told me this halfway through watching The Hurt Locker, <\/em>after asking me to turn it off. I tried to be sympathetic, but his disapproval of modern technology, his need to boss me around, his insistence on telling me how not to do this<\/em> or how to do that<\/em>, and his not so subtle homophobic views (as spotlighted while watching Love, Simon<\/em>) was getting more or less tiresome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, one day, I ask him, \u201cWhy did you come to me?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Grandpa\u2019s picture blinks steadily. He says, \u201cYou<\/em> came to me<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My dead grandpa talks to me through a picture. In the picture he wears a black, oversized sweater. The exposed brick wall of the kitchen is behind him. It\u2019s a picture of us, he\u2019s holding me, as a baby, on his lap. I\u2019ve got orange food on my white sweater. It\u2019s weird that he moves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original-work","category-stories"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.isharawrites.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}