He’s Gone

On Monday, April 26th, my grandfather died. I knew him by one name and one name only, “Nana.”

My nana is my maternal grandfather, but “Nana” has a better ring to it. In his lifetime, he fathered five sons and two daughters, and was grandfather to eleven kids. I am the second in his long list of grandchildren, and the first granddaughter. This wouldn’t matter, if we had a typical relationship.

Most people I know get regular time with their grandparents. Whether it’s family holidays or weekends or a couple of weeks in the summer, grandparents are recurring cast members in the typical family dynamic. My parents left everything they knew before I was born. I was the first grandchild that wasn’t born in Bangladesh. My grandparents didn’t meet me until I was four or five years old.

I’d like to say I remember more from the early visits, but I didn’t retain much. I lost my dada (paternal grandfather) and nanu (maternal grandmother) before the age of 10. At the time, I felt my parents’ loss more than my own. Everything I knew of them, I heard from my parents. This didn’t apply to my nana.

The last time I went to Bangladesh was in 2011. This time, I was old enough to remember. Even though more than a decade passed since he last saw me, my nana knew me and loved me all the same. I remember seeing him and calling out “Nana!” Every time I called him “Nana,” he would call me “Nana.” There was always a playful lilt in his voice. I still hear it now.

Nana was a man who lived by his routine. He would always wake up before sunrise for fajr prayer, and then he would go back to sleep for a few more hours. I would wake up with everyone else, and eat breakfast with the rest of the family and dawdle until Nana woke up. He ate the same breakfast everyday: deem bhaji (fried egg), a roti and a banana. I would hear him call “Nanaaa” and I knew he was calling for me.

Every morning for a month, I ate two breakfasts. One with the family, and one with my nana. He would give me exactly half of his meal, feeding me by hand, before he fed himself. There was nothing I could say, he would always feed me first. And that’s the kind of man he was, a man who would always give before taking, a man who put others before himself.

A part of him will always live with me, and yet, I can’t stop thinking about all the things I didn’t do. I would call him after I came back from Bangladesh, and I would feel sorry that he was eating his meals alone again. More and more time would pass between calls, and then they stopped altogether. I would try to talk to my nana, but my heart would ache too much. It just wasn’t the same over the phone, at least for me.

My parents still went back to Bangladesh every few years, and I never thought to go with them. My mom would press the phone to my ear every time she was speaking to someone in Bangladesh, the question was always the same: “when are you coming?” Every time my mom talked to my nana, he would ask about me. If I regret anything in life, it’s not calling him and speaking to him directly - I couldn’t tell him how much it hurts to not be around him, to see him get older and do nothing to help.

I thought about going to Bangladesh again, and never did. I had developed an idea to interview my remaining grandparents and capture our family history. I wanted to document our family with my camera. Every picture I have is borrowed from someone else. I thought about it so many times. Why didn’t I go?

Now, I have a few precious memories of my nana and learn more about him through my parents and their stories. I’ll never get to ask which memory he returns to the most, the best part of being a grandfather, how he wants to be remembered… I’ll remember him as an embodiment of unconditional love, someone who loved me fiercely. I’ll remember him as the most religious man I’ve ever met, who always prayed for others. It’s fitting that he passed during the holy month of Ramadan, but it doesn’t make things any easier.

Two words. That’s how I found out. “He’s gone.” I didn’t see him pass. I didn’t get to tell him what he meant to me. He was just… gone. He was so much more than a grandfather. He was a pillar of our family, a connection to our past, and an example of persistence and humility. Even now, in between tears, I find myself just calling his name “Nana? Nana.”