Surviving Like My Grandfather

surviving Like my grandfather By Elya Kaplan

Survival. The word rings with pain and struggle and strife. It smells of tears and blood and sweat, of the trees that grant shelter through long nights. It feels like clenched fists and pounding feet. It sounds like whistles and dog barks, like shouting in the woods. For you, for you it meant these things. It meant having a mother survived only by her son. It means fleeing the only home you’ve ever known, leaving behind a life you’d only just begun. A boy on the run fighting to survive forces unfathomable driven by hatred and pride and fear. For you, it meant coming to a new land. A land not entirely yours, rife with conflict of a different kind. It meant living and growing and becoming someone of your own right with a legacy no one would ever envy. For you, it meant love and a new kind of war, one you had to face with a gun in your hand, not running anymore. It meant building a life, building a city from the ground up. It meant marriage and family, three beautiful children and a young country, fighting to grow alongside you. For you, it meant living with the memories every day, both wishing to forget and fearing the oblivion that came when you tried to recall your youth. It meant quiet grief and a life full of work. It meant grandchildren, eight of them, their laughter and youth, the way they looked up to you. The way I look up to you. Because of the love and strength you imbued in our family. Because of your resilience, your kindness, your tickling moustache, and the way you threw me into the air. Survival looked like the life you could give us because you ran, because you survived. And you kept surviving. You survived your heart attack. You survived the prognosis they gave you when they found your cancer. Pancreatic, stage four; they gave you months. You lived for two years. You lost your belly and your rolling laugh. You shrank down, became a quieter ghost of yourself, but you never lost your hope or your uncanny ability to ignore problems you didn’t fancy. You survived loneliness and a child overseas. You survived the years of memories and the years of joy. But eventually, it all ran out. You survived for so long and it still caught up to you. No matter your laughter or your success or your joy, no matter how passionately you loved or how gratefully you lived, this time, you couldn’t survive. And then you passed on your grave legacy, the survival you bore for us all. You were survived by us. By me. And I will keep on surviving, because you did.