At my grandfather’s funeral, I thought the hardest part would be saying goodbye. Then a stranger approached me after everyone left and placed a folded note in my hands, and suddenly, the man my family thought they knew did not seem so simple anymore.
When I was little, I thought my grandpa was the most magical person in the world. He was not the kind of clown people mocked, and he certainly was not the kind meant to frighten children.
My grandpa was the kind who could walk into a room and make even the grumpiest person smile without trying too hard.
He could juggle three apples while telling a story, twist napkins into animals at the dinner table, and pull peppermints from behind my ears like he had actual magic tucked into his sleeves.
Back then, all the kids envied me.
I had the “cool grandpa.”
When I was seven, he came to my school picnic in giant yellow shoes and a bright vest with mismatched buttons. He painted a red heart on one cheek and bowed so deeply to my classmates that one of them fell off the bench laughing.
I remember standing beside him, proud as anything, holding his hand while he made balloon dogs for half the school.
“Jenny,” he told me that day, lowering himself to one knee so we were eye to eye, “never be ashamed of bringing joy where there wasn’t any before.”
I took that seriously.
So when he put on his curly red wig and painted his nose, I always played along with him. I wore old feather boas from Grandma’s attic and announced him like he was the star of the show.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” I’d say, sweeping my arm toward him, “the great Mason the Magnificent!”
He would place one hand over his chest and answer, “You are far too kind, Miss Jenny.”
Then he would pretend to trip over nothing, and I would laugh so hard my stomach hurt.
But as we grew older, things changed.
By the time I was 13, my cousins had stopped thinking Grandpa Mason was funny. My older brother Nate, who was 19 now, would tense up whenever Grandpa answered the door in his red wig.
My cousin Alicia rolled her eyes so often around him that I started wondering if they would get stuck that way. Even the younger cousins, who used to beg for balloon animals, started acting embarrassed when their friends were around.
People started laughing.
Not the warm kind of laughter Grandpa used to draw out of people. The mean kind.
The sharp kind that made you feel it in your chest.
