Halfway through my time at Lehigh, I’ve started to look back on how I’ve changed.
I’ve been told it’s apparent that I’m more authentically myself — something I was so afraid of losing when coming to college.
I’ve also thought a lot about the people who have been here to witness it.
And the ones who haven’t.
It was May 2020. The socially distanced visit between my family and grandparents in a parking lot full of chipped pavement was coming to an end, and my Grandma Harriet and Poppa Burt walked to their car. They held on to one another as they always did.
The face masks weighed heavy on all our faces, but I knew my grandparents were especially isolated.
This moment felt important. I decided it needed to be documented.
At that time in high school, I was learning about black-and-white photography. The sun’s glare was inappropriate for such a somber moment, so I decided to try what I’d learned.
Taking away the distracting color and focusing on my grandparents in the picture solidified my love for black-and-white photography.
For my college application essay, I wrote about this picture of my grandparents. I called it “Hold My Hand,” something my grandparents had done all their lives, starting in their late teens when they met, and for the last time when we lost my Poppa Burt abruptly the next year.
I’d never lost someone I loved before. I never understood what it meant when someone so constant in your life — someone who seemed to be immortal — was gone.
Loss is inherent to all of our lives.
It’s nothing new, but that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. I realized that as the smell of his black Nissan Altima and the sound of his voice slipped from my memory as the calendar turned.
Sometimes I feel like I’m pulling at air to remember. And then I think of the photo.
In the shades of gray, I learn something new about Poppa every time I see him. I see his big brown eyes just like mine, the ones my friends tell me are kind and trusting.
I see his unruly gray curls furled into the shape of a mullet — the same ones he joked a celebrity would only wish to have. I see the wrinkles that outline the long, beautiful story of his life full of love, laughter, hardship and a story only he could tell.
The picture is so jarring to me. It’s a stark reminder that he’s gone, but also a reminder to my grandma that their love is still alive.
“Hold My Hand” sits on a table in Grandma Harriet’s living room, right next to the couch Poppa would sit on to watch his favorite movies or whatever else was on the TV.
My family tells me and my brother that his love for us was unconditional, and his support was unlike anything they’d ever seen.
Poppa was one of the first people I told when I joined my high school’s newspaper and discovered I liked journalism, given my longtime love for reading and writing — something he always encouraged.
Everything I wrote was followed within 20 minutes by a phone call, assuring me that when, not if, I won a Pulitzer Prize, he and my grandmother would demand front-row seats.
He was one of the first grandparent volunteers for my brother’s first-grade field trip. He left a strong impact on everyone he met, so much so that my brother’s teacher was one of the first to arrive to sit Shiva, a Jewish period of mourning, after his funeral.
His love for my twin brother and me was embedded in every aspect of our lives. After his passing, I’ve noticed that’s the one thing I don’t need to go searching for. It’s always there.
Like I said, loss is inevitable. But it doesn’t mean that we lose their love.
I’m not particularly religious, but I’m a big believer in signs — signals that our loved ones’ memories are still with us.
I’ve come to learn that love lingers in the red-hot sunset, just like my Aunt Norma’s hair.
Love is sticking out our tongues and symbols that look like the Yankees logo for my Grandpa Marty.
Love is the warm sun, shining as bright as Uncle Don’s smile.
Love is in flowers that bloom when everything else has wilted and in animals with big brown eyes that look at me with as much love and pride as my Poppa Burt did.
The people may have gone on, yet their love lingers. It roots itself within us.
My Poppa can’t hold my grandmother’s hand like he once did in my photograph. He isn’t a phone call away, but when I miss him, all I need to do is look around.