Real things that don’t exist

Heather Ainsley
ECB Publishing, Inc.

I have always been a reader. Even when I don't have time to sit down and read full chapters of a novel, I still enjoy catching a snippet or two from the mind of someone else. It's amazing when I think about it: all the books I have read have been created with just 26 little letters (mind you, I am limited only to the English language, but, oh! Imagine how my world of adventure would grow if I could read in other languages!). Somehow, these 26 tiny little symbols are capable of being transformed into worlds and journeys and people that do not exist but are very, very real. And it is such a delight to dive into these worlds, to take these journeys, to meet these people who do not exist.
When I don't have time to read novels, I settle for poetry and short insights that come from the minds of other people, who are busy out there somewhere in the wide world, creating universes. Most recently, I read a quote that said, “Be the things that you loved most about the people who are gone.”
I have tried to search the vastness of the internet to find the original author of this quote, but I have been unsuccessful. Even so, I have found myself thinking about this ever since I first read it.
As I approach the anniversary of my grandfather's death, I find myself missing him more and more. While the past three years (goodness, has it been three years already?) have helped to lessen the sharp sting of this loss a little, his absence is still ever-present, and this time of the year can be difficult to navigate.
But when I read quotes like the one above, I feel a certain peace wash over me. Through a lifetime of conversations, laughter and well-mannered philosophical debate, my grandfather left a great deal of who he was with me. I used to love spending hours in my youth, listening to him retell the stories from books he had just finished reading, and we would discuss all the story's intricacies at length. As a published author, he loved hearing about the novel I was writing, encouraging me to take my characters a step further, to be bold with them in ways I cannot be in my real life.
The unique treasures he kept in his home delighted and enchanted me. Everywhere you looked there was an intentional surprise; a hand-made spider hung in a corner, invisible until you happened to look exactly at it; the smallest wind chime hanging in the dining room beneath the ceiling fan, so it would tinkle quietly when the fan was running; an unassuming crystal hung in the window, where the sun would catch it for just an hour every evening, and shower a cascade of rainbow prisms around the living room. His love of classical music, the way he rested his coffee mug right next to his water cup while doing his paintings, so that all his mugs had paint stains even when washed. These are all things about him I miss.
Being around him was a feeling. It was a type of safety. He was wonderfully weird, and hopelessly kind. I knew him to be a gentle and quiet soul, content to paint, write, drink coffee and spoil his cats. In keeping his memory close, I can look at myself and see the parts of him that he gave to me, one by one, year by year. Every afternoon I spent in his home, I was unaware that with every visit, I would be leaving with pieces of him to cherish, collecting little mental keepsakes that, much like the stories in the books, do not physically exist, but are very, very real.
When we lose people we love, it can feel as if they are gone from our lives. But within us all, there are pieces of who they were, and they have become a deep part of who we are now. I know my life was changed for having known my grandfather. There are parts of who he was that I will cherish as a part of me for my entire life. I will pass these cherished parts to my own children someday, and so on. In the end of the story, there will be parts of us all that will live forever. Emily Dickinson once wrote, “Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality.”