Jose M. Bonelli - Someone important to me by: Maia Bonelli Albuquerque

 I am one of the lucky ones. I got to know him, and grew up with him. Many people can’t say the same about their grandparents.  

My mother was born and raised in Colombia, her parents separated when she was a baby, at the age of two my grandmother remarried to my mother’s step father, my grandfather.  My mother’s stepfather was her father regardless of blood. He was my grandfather. But he made a decision, when he was very young to pick up a smoke. A simple decision that changed his life, and ultimately ended it.

The story starts when my grandma met my grandfather at a window making factory in the United States. My grandma started working at the factory and my grandfather was her supervisor. They became friends first. My grandfather was great at giving advice and simply listening to my grandmother.  One day, my grandfather asked my grandmother out. They went out the next morning to a diner, my grandfather’s favorite type of food, for breakfast. Since then my grandmother fell in love. My grandfather says their relationship was like a movie, they would only have eyes for each other. My grandmother's coworker even noticed how my grandfather would look at her, because he was in love. They dated for some time before my grandmother introduced him to her daughter, my mother, who was only 5 at the time.  My mother met her dad for the first time at a diner, the place where her parents fell in love. 

At the beginning my mother would jokingly say she didn't;t love him. But at the age of 9 she called him dad. He was always kind to her and would help her with her homework.   He was her father. As for my grandmother, he was the love of her life, the kind of love from the movies, one that can never be replaced. My grandmother to this day, thanks God everyday  for having put  him in her path because it was a love like no other. A love that will always last. He was kind, compassionate, loving , and always putting others before himself.  He left the factory  and went many different place for work and brought his new family with him.

He never really a job that stuck, you could call him  a man of many trades. He was a contractor, a farmer, a business owner. He did everything in his power to provide for his children one from a previous marriage and my mother. He wanted the best for his family and made sure he did everything in his power to ensure that. He would help my mom with her homework, helped her learn English, he was her father. Through all this time, he had been smoking, his lungs getting weaker.  In 2000, he was diagnosed with emphysema. He lived with illness 15 years, getting weaker and weaker. It started off as having a portable oxygen tank, but it got the point when he was sick, bedridden and it took too much out of him to even speak. His illness was terminal. It was a diagnosis that changed his life but he never let it control him. He continued going to get groceries to a small deli by his home in belleville, and worked as long his body allowed. We would go every weekend to visit him, have dinner every weekend, spend holidays. Years went by and my grandfather grew sicker, what his illness entailed. He was towards the end of his life, the doctors told, they knew he had less than a year left.  It was extremely stressful for my mother, I remember my mom having to leave while I was at a playdate with my friends because she thought he was dying. 

The last few years of his life, my mom made the decision to move my grandfather closer to home. He moved to Lafayette, New Jersey where he used to live with his wife and her parents. And that was one of the best summers of my life. They told my grandfather that he wouldn’t survive the move, but he did. I remember that summer as if it was yesterday. I remember him teaching me how to play cards with him, or watching soccer with him. I remember showing him the book that I wrote about him in the fourth  grade. But most vividly, I remember that night. That night when I went over, that Thursday November 20, 2015. My great grandmother made dinner for us that night, salmon and yellow rice as I watched Jessie with my sister. I remember that day that I was in gym class and I sprained my thumb and I was in pain. After eating dinner, My mother was still upstairs with my grandfather who was sleeping. I went to give him a kiss on his head and went home. When I arrived home that night, my parents took me to their room and sat me down. My dad looked at me, with a face I've never seen before. I knew.  I cried for about 10 minutes until my dad took me aside and said its worse for your mom, you are strong. Since that day I never cried, not at his funeral, not when we visited the cemetery every birthday, fathers day, holiday, weekend . I wished I would've known that he was dying that night. I would've told him how much I loved him and what he meant to me. But I was too late.  At his funeral, when I saw what was left of him . I couldn't believe that this man whom I had loved my whole life was gone forever. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him or regret playing another hand of cards. I wish i would've asked more questions and talked to him more. I am one of the lucky ones, who had an amazing grandfather in my life. Although he left, I am glad that I got to be his granddaughter, glad his name is now mine. I was told years later, that my grandfather gave up, that he couldn’t do it any longer, his body was failing and he was in such pain, that it hurt him to live. If only, I had told him that I loved him, maybe he would have lived longer  but I can’t blame myself for that.  He had a terminal illness and lived far past the life expectancy, he fought with everything he could with his dying breath. My grandfather meant the world to me.  My grandfather passed away nearly 5 years ago, and I will never forget him.

My dad asked me in the car last week over break if I remembered him. I responded I remember him like you wouldn't believe.