Every year that passes, I forget a bit more. Faces, names, tiny details in fading memories. I can barely remember my grandfather. I remember what it felt like to hold his hand. The dry creases of his palm, the cool band of his wedding ring, his long fingers capturing mine. The warmth. When I was young, and we went for walks around the property, I would cling to his hand like a lifeline. I thought that if I let go, we’d be separated and I would get lost. So he let me cling to him, his hand, his arm, the coarseness of his jacket sleeve. Or he’d hoist me up onto his shoulders and I’d put my chin on the top of his head, and his hair would tickle my cheeks as he walked and I would smell campfire on his scalp. But that must have been when I was very small, when he was still strong. As I got older, his hands became smaller. Still wrinkled and warm, but also bony, like if I squeezed too hard his fingers would break. By then I knew to be gentle. And it was me leading him by the hand, helping him to the stiff leather of his favorite arm chair. We sat together, and he read me stories. I can’t remember which ones. Only the gravelly baritone that was his voice and soft corners and cracked spine of the storybook. He had a beard then, I remember that too. How it felt against my cheek whenever I hugged him goodbye. Almost like the fuzzy side of Velcro. White and wiry.

He was the first person I knew that died. I was nearing the end of elementary school, and had a hard time understanding. I knew he was getting older, slower, thinner. His hands had more creases in them with each visit, and he didn’t smell like campfire anymore. But then he was just gone. I knew what death was, in theory, but I figured we would be there, at his bedside, as he slowly drifted off. Instead, it was abrupt. For me, my grandpa was alive when the phone rang and dead when my mother hung up and delivered the news.

He didn’t want a coffin or a viewing. He wanted to be cremated, and his ashes spread. We each took a handful, my mother and father and I, after the service. I thought they would be like the ashes left over at a campsite. Soft, pure black, almost fluffy. His were gray and rough, like a handful of sand. And when bits stuck to my hand and in the creases of my fingers I began to cry, because I didn’t like how it felt, couldn’t understand how this could be him. I didn’t know if washing it off would destroy him, if I was supposed to let a part of him remain on my skin. And then my father knelt down and brushed my palms with his. Helping the rest of his ashes come loose and drift away in the wind.