Personal Project

Many shades of Abuelo by Wooni

With a new decade already starting I am confronted with an ever growing realization. Death is part of the cycle of life, and my dear abuelito is approaching this phase. I find it hard to accept the fact, that even though he is 89 he could ever die. He was always there. Even though in my eyes he was always grey haired and old he seems immortal.

I am told I have to start saying goodbye to this man that was more of a father than my own father was. How do I say goodbye to a man that gave me a home, education, a family, fond memories, and more. How can I leave behind a man that turned a common box into a tool of imagination and wonder, a man that could remember any date from his past and recant what happened exactly on that day, a man who is a genius, a brilliant mathematician, chess player, avid reader, devout catholic, wonderful father, adoring grandfather, and a strict disciplinarian. How can I? I do not want to say those words. I don't even want to see what the cruelness of time has done to him. He is now trapped inside this fragile cage, and only during rare glimpses are we able to hear his wondrous mind tell us that he realizes his own entrapment.

So I have decided to give all of my fond memories of him a new home. I will create a new body for him where his soul can come a visit if it likes. Call me crazy if you want but since I am not God, nor anything remotely close, I can only create something material and out of cloth. Therefore I will create a plush form of him.

Each stitch will contain his laughter, his rythmic tapping on the dinning room table, his games to fight of the boredom, his dislike of vegetables and fish, his evening whistle when he walks through the door, his graceful walk down the hallway, his warm hand on my cheek whenever we would say goodbye, and so many other small things that my abuelito is.