To Visit With You

Re-visiting with my grandpa brought up some tears and laughs.

I watched the cemetery as gravestones passed by while I ate my ice-cream. I've seen this place for what felt like a thousand times now and faintly wondered if anyone I knew was in there when someone spoke up.

 

"Hey did you guys want to go visit grandpa?" Shadow asked.

 

I looked up to him in the driver seat and replied 'sure' along with Beau and Akira. We were going back to Akira's house after filling up three gallons of water. I waited as Shadow u-turned the white SUV we were driving in back to the little mini-mart to go buy some essential stuff to visit grandpa. For instace, we bought food, toothpicks, and a red-bull for our grandpa to eat, use, and drink. I didn't know it before, but Akira had explained that it was grandpa's favorite stuff. They had said that he always drank red-bull and always had toothpicks in his mouth. I smiled sadly to myself---I didn't remember him well enough to know that, even if I was older then Akira I wasn't around much.

 

After we pulled up into the mini-mart parking lot and walked into the store Akira and I grabbed the chicken and sticky rice with the red-bull and went up to pay for the stuff. We walked back out to the car and got in.

 

"Did you guys get the toothpicks?" Shadow asked checking the bag.

 

"...Oh...right..." I muttered and got back out of the car, hurrying to get the toothpicks and got back into the car.

 

"Hey Beau you got my ice-cream?" Akira asked

 

Beau nodded and handed him the Snickers ice-cream bar. I grabbed my popsicle and continued to eat it.

 

"Hey you guys, you know we're eating with grandpa right...?" Shadow asked glancing back at us with the rear view mirror.

 

"...Right..." I mummbled and put away the popsicle. It was cold and my hand's felt like freezing off.

 

"I'm putting mine in my pocket." Akira said, and we chuckled at his statement.

 

When we got back to the cemetery we were slightly confused on where to enter into.

 

"I remeber his had a black heart..." Someone murmmered.

 

"He had a black heart?"

 

"The gravestone was a black heart."

 

"Oh."

 

A few minutes later we found him and parked the SUV. I grabbed the bag of food and toothpicks, along with my popsicle and got out along with everyone else. We walked out and sat infront of his gravestone with the picture of him. I opened the pack of sticky rice and chicken and handed it to Shadow to place it infront of the];p0pllllllll.. gravestone. (1)

 

I ate my popsical silently as Beau popped open the red-bull and poured some down near grandpa's food. He murmmered some words to our grandpa before handing it to Akira to do so too. After Akira shared some words to our grandpa  he handed it so Shadow, who took his turn and then handed the red-bull to me. I was about to speak when we noticed that tears started to stream slowly down Akira's face. He hid them into Beau's shoulder and we watched sadly.

 

I poured some red-bull down and thought about how I didn't know him that well...so I told him that we missed him. After that we began to eat our ice cream in silence and tears.

 

Akira was pulling his ice cream out of his pocket when he exclaimed, "MY ICE CREAM MELTED!"

 

All four of us broke out into laughter with tears still streaming down our faces. Akira began to wipe away the melted chocolate and vanilla icecream on his hands and began to eat what was left of the Snickers ice-cream bar.

 

Then I noticed that moment, even when we were sad we could still be happy. There's always a way to make things better if someone is with you to help. Family, will always be there to help eachother no matter what.

 

Finishing up our ice-creams, we poured out what was left of the red-bull and left the chicken with sticky rice there. Akira wiped away his tears and I slung an arm around his shoulder.

 

"It's okay Akira. I know you like these pants but once we get home you can just wear boxers---so quit your crying!" I had tried to crack a joke. (2)

 

We laughed at the little inside joke and all glanced back at the flattened grass we had sat on with a small smile.

 

It was nice to visit after so long.

 

__________________________________________________________________________________

1- So in the Hmong culture we bring food to our past ones to eat. We also have paper money we burn and send to them so they can use it in Heaven....yeah I don't know all of it---just a little amount...

 

2.Well whenever we're at Akira's house all he wears is boxers....so yeah...XD and if you didn't get the joke I was saying that he was crying because his ice cream melted in his pants and not because of our grandpa...to lighten the mood ya know?

 

 

Author's Note

Hope you like it! Tell me what you think please because this is a very important memry to me.

Reviews

[TopHatGirl]

I like how the twist was you were visiting your grandpa in the cemetery, meaning he's dead.This was a really sweet story, and I love how it flowed together. Uhm, don't get offended, but it seems like this is from a child's point of view, with the popsical and all. Really nice story.