He had a heart attack a few years ago and has slowly withered away into a man I don’t know anymore. His spirit’s been extinguished, I can see it in his eyes. I can see it every time my grandmother sobs, “He says he’s a nobody. He says he’s nothing.” I’ve always looked to his strength. Now it’s barely there.

I can’t tell whether I’m more terrified of him dying or having a part of me die. When he had his heart attack, I couldn’t deal with it. I completely shut down. I lost myself in that suffocating sadness because I’ve always seen himself in me. The same stubbornness, the same ferocity, the same goofiness, the same protective and sheltered spirit, and I took comfort in knowing there was someone in this world like me.

Someone who understands why I do the things I do, when no one else does. I wasn’t afraid of losing my grandfather, I was afraid of losing my friend. The person who just gets me.

As time’s gone on, I’ve realized there’s no way to say goodbye, because no goodbye will ever mean enough. No goodbye will tell him I love him. No goodbye will show him how hard I’ve worked to make him proud. But most importantly, no goodbye will save him. He will go. And I will just have to deal with it.

There’s a certain comfort in the absolution of it all. There’s no maybes or what ifs. There’s just life and death.

But it’s a small comfort, a feeble attempt at masking my feelings, because I know once he’s gone something inside of me will change. Maybe for the worse, maybe for the better. I just don’t like to think about it, because honestly I think it will harden my heart and I’ll close myself off to protect it.

What there is, though, is the time I have now with him to build memories that will last me a lifetime. I cycle back to the good times, to the memory of the man I knew, the man I want to remember him as.

His lanky stride as he climbed up the stairs with a bottle of cherry kijafa and a shot glass. The straw-like material of his cabbie hats he’d always wear as he lay out on the hammock in the backyard, shaded by the crab apple trees. The way he’d say, “Hi,” in his thick, low Romanian accent, standing straight up from the couch and stuffing his hands in his pocket. The way his wrinkles draped around his eyes and jaw, giving him a slightly hound dog look, as his wispy gray hair covered his bald spot.

And all the times he’d sigh and swat his hand through the air as my grandmother nagged him about something.

I won’t dwell on the fact I’m losing him. I’ll dwell on the fact I was lucky enough to know him. He will always be a part of me. He’s sewn right into my heart, each smile and laugh and memory — just a stitch holding him in place.

My grandfather made me a better person. He gave me an example in life and he was a motivator. Although we never talked, he could only speak Romanian and I could only speak English, we always knew what the other was saying.

In the fragments of broken English and Romanian, through the stories my grandmother would tell me, and in the uproarious laughter he’d create at the Thanksgiving dinner table, I got to know my grandfather. I’m still getting to know him. Even though he’s not the same person he was, I know the old him is in there somewhere and even if it isn’t, I was lucky enough to have the time I had with that side of him.

There are few people in our lives with which we’ll feel a deep connection to. Although the idea of losing him destroys me, I know with every great joy comes a great pain and I’ll take all the suffering to have another moment with him.

Those are the people who deserve to be cherished. Too often in life we waste time and energy on the people who drain us; who see us as a conquest or a means to an end.

And we overlook the people who were always there, the foundation, the ones who will ask you how your day is going and genuinely want to see you happy because they care with every fiber of their being — the ones who will drain themselves for you.

He is my foundation, because when I’m around him I don’t have to say a word to get my point across. I can sit in comfortable silence and I just know he loves me. I didn’t cherish him then, but I will cherish him now. He’ll be the person I tell my children about.

“Man, if you only knew your great-grandfather.”

No matter what happens in life, I will always have my foundation, even when the day comes that he’s just a memory.

Julia Nagy is the Photo Editor at The State News and a journalism junior. Reach her at julia.nagy@statenews.com.