As I’ve written in a previous article, I have an excessive amount of love for writing and music. No one else in my family likes to do either of those things. I’m the odd ball out when it comes to that. After I turned the ripe age of fifteen, I realized how much music and writing meant to me. I knew that both these hobbies would stick with me for the rest of my life. I just didn’t know where I got these gifts from. My family started to take notice of how passionate those two things are to me. My grandmother then told me my deceased grandfather was a writer and a singer. After hearing that, everything made sense. I was like a lightbulb in my head and in my heart clicked. He played the clarinet, I played the clarinet. He sang in a church choir, I sang in a church choir. He was a writer, I am a writer. His strong suit was poetry, my strong suit is poetry. I got these two, beautiful talents from him. Unfortunately, my grandfather was brutally murdered back in 1982 but that’s a different story. The moral is that I sadly never got to meet him. Everyone in my family tells me that I sing and write like him. I think that’s why I feel extremely connected to both hobbies more than the average person. There’s a soul connection to both things all from a man in my family I have never met. My one of a kind grandfather because from all the stories Iv;e been told, he was one in a million. Knowing out of anyone else in the family, I was the one who got his two best qualities. I always imagine what life with him would be like. Singing and writing music together. Harmonizing our “angelic” voices as everyone says he had the voice of an angel and from what I’m told, I too have it. Writing beautiful poetry for our loved ones as words of love, appreciation or just out of the blue surprises. Singing in the church together every Sunday. Doing karaoke in the car together as I know he would’ve been on board with that. I imagine he would still be writing and singing if he was still here. Those were his passions. Now, they have become mine. That’s why I write poems and sing for my grandmother any chance that I get. It reminds her of the days he was alive and it makes me feel close to him. A feeling that he’s always with me. A man I’ve never met. A man who was taken from the world too soon. A man who was immensely talented and gifted. A man that was going to be a grandfather one day and didn’t even know it then. A man that left a mark on all his family when he was taken from the world. A man who should still be here.I truly believe he chose me to have his two best qualities because he wanted my family to know that just because he isn’t physically here, he will always be there spiritually.
He is the root to my talents. I stem from him.