My Turn: What My Grandpa Did Not Witness
My grandpa moved to the U.S. in October 2016, less than a month before I voted in my first presidential election. This means that he never got to see what America was, only what America has become.
My grandpa is 95 years young. If you meet him, you’ll understand exactly why I say young. This is a man who can climb onto the countertop to reach for something on the top shelf. He single-handedly carries chairs around the house until every person at the party has a seat. He continues to carry his cane mid-air while walking because he forgets that he’s supposed to need it at his age. He continues to obliterate his competition during mean games of bingo.
Still, over the past couple years, we have witnessed my grandpa’s decline. While the memories of his prosperous life continue to remain strong, the frivolous memories of the park he visited last week or the magazine he read yesterday are quick to evaporate. As a result, many mornings during the election season looked the same in my house. My grandpa would come downstairs, turn on the TV, and light up in awe when he saw the presidential candidates campaigning.
“Wah, an Indian woman is president? How amazing!” he’d exclaim.
And every morning, we’d smile as we reminded him that these were just the candidates and that the next president was yet to be elected. While memory loss can be a vicious, debilitating condition, I try to remind myself what an honor it is to witness a man had many triumphs and who overcome many hardships across nearly a century. Now he has the innocence and hope he must have had in his early years.
My grandpa has lived through history that I’m yet to learn about. Much of his success came from his ability to adapt to whatever life threw his way. He single-handedly moved across his country to a new region of India, where he adopted an unfamiliar language, culture, and food to reshape his identity. He served as a powerful leader of hundreds at the textile mill while still remaining a gentle father who made it home for lunch every day. He didn’t let his hearing loss stop him from forming relationships when, at the age of 87, he moved to the U.S. to be close to his children.
However, despite living through an eventful century, my grandpa could not witness the election of the first female and first part-Indian president of the U.S. On January 20, 2025, when my grandpa comes downstairs and turns on the TV to watch the swearing in of the 47th president, he won’t be saying, “Wah, an Indian woman is president? How amazing!”
On Inauguration Day, we’ll hold back our tears when we tell him the truth. And in some twisted way, I’m almost grateful that this memory will evaporate. I hope he doesn’t have to remember how his new home decided that the rights and safety of his daughters and granddaughters weren’t a priority. I hope he doesn’t have to remember how his new home decided that the Department of Education and the access to special ed, which made his grandkids’ education possible, wasn’t a priority. I hope he doesn’t have to remember how his new home decided that equal access to healthcare, which benefits his family full of “preexisting” conditions, wasn’t a priority.
But most of all, four years from now, when my grandpa is getting ready for his 99th birthday, I hope our home will finally be ready to make history with him. Because while he might not remember, I will never forget.
Raveena Kumar is a pediatric speech-language pathologist who values cultivating connections through improving communication skills. In her free time, she enjoys traveling the world, writing for her blog, and drinking hot cups of chai.
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