From that moment on, he became my entire world.
He gave me the larger bedroom and moved himself into the smaller one without a second thought. He taught himself how to braid my hair by watching online videos late at night. He packed my lunch every morning, sat through every school play, and squeezed into tiny chairs during parent-teacher meetings as if he belonged there.
To me, he wasn’t just my grandfather.
He was my hero.
When I was ten, I told him, full of certainty,
“When I grow up, I want to help kids the way you helped me.”
He hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe.
“You can be anything you want,” he said.
“Anything at all.”
But love didn’t mean abundance.
We never had much.
No family vacations.
No eating out.
No surprise gifts “just because.”
As I grew older, I began to notice a pattern.
“Grandpa, can I get new clothes?”
“Everyone at school has those jeans.”
He always answered the same way.
“We can’t afford it, kiddo.”
I hated that sentence.
I hated wearing secondhand clothes while everyone else showed off brand names.
I hated my outdated phone that barely worked.
And worst of all, I hated myself for feeling angry at the man who had given me everything he could.
I cried quietly into my pillow at night, ashamed of my resentment but unable to stop it. He told me I could become anything—but it started to feel like a promise made without the means to keep it.
Then he got sick.
The anger disappeared instantly, replaced by fear so deep it made my stomach ache.
The man who had carried my entire world on his shoulders could no longer climb the stairs without stopping to catch his breath. We couldn’t afford a nurse—of course we couldn’t—so I became his caregiver.
He tried to brush it off, always smiling.
“I’ll be fine,” he said.
“Just a cold. You focus on your exams.”
I looked at him and thought:
That’s not true.
“Please,” I said softly, gripping his hand.
“Let me take care of you.”
I juggled my final semester of high school with helping him get to the bathroom, feeding him spoonfuls of soup, and making sure he took his mountain of medicine.
Every time I looked at his face, thinner and paler each morning, I felt the panic rise in my chest. What would become of us both?
One evening, I was helping him back into bed when he said something that disturbed me.
He was shaking from the exertion of the short walk to the bathroom. As he settled down, his eyes fixed on me with an intensity I hadn’t seen before.
“Lila, I need to tell you something.”
“Later, Grandpa. You’re exhausted, and you need to rest.”
But we never got a “later.”
When he finally died in his sleep, my world stopped.
I had just graduated from high school, and instead of feeling excited or hopeful, I found myself stuck in a terrifying liminal space that felt like drowning.
I stopped eating properly.
I stopped sleeping.
Then the bills started arriving — water, electricity, property tax, everything.
I didn’t know what to do with them.
Grandpa had left me the house, but how would I afford to keep it? I’d have to get a job immediately, or maybe try to sell the house just to buy myself a few months of sheer survival before figuring out my next move.
Then, two weeks after the funeral, I got a call from an unknown number.
A woman’s voice came through the speaker. “My name is Ms. Reynolds. I’m from the bank, and I’m calling regarding your late grandfather.”
A bank. Those words I’d hated so much, “we can’t afford that,” came rushing back, but with a terrible new twist: he was too proud to ask for help, and now I would be held responsible for some massive, unsettled debt.
The woman’s next words were so unexpected, I almost dropped my phone.
“Your grandfather wasn’t who you think he was. We need to talk.”
“What do you mean, he wasn’t who I think he was? Was he in trouble? Did he owe someone money?”
“We can’t discuss the details over the phone. Can you make it this afternoon?”
“Yes, I’ll be there.”
See Continuation On Next Page 👇
