A World Without Ahh

“I hope you have a lot of friends one day, Tom.”

My grandfather spoke these words to me when I was 15. We were in the car as I joined him on his usual run of errands: the bank, pharmacy, post office.

It’s strange referring to him as “my grandfather” — he was always just “Ahh” to me.

Even stranger now to think of him in the past tense.

My grandfather, Ahh, died this week.

~ ~ ~

Six years ago, I told the story of Ahh: how a stroke on Good Friday stole his voice until Easter Sunday. Six years later, his earthly story reached its final page.

A first generation Mexican-American born on Cinco de Mayo, and a father among fathers who died on Father’s Day. My dad and aunts and uncles have often attested to his greatness as their dad, and from my perspective, he was a pretty great grandfather, too.

From one job in Korea to another at a Philadelphia TV station where he met an infant Carrie Fisher and kissed Shirley Temple, Ahh lived a poetic life. His long distance, handwritten romance with my grandmother is one for the storybooks.

Ahh traveled the world and told stories of God’s goodness. Seven years ago, I heard him speak to the elderly at the Little Sisters of the Poor near where I lived in southern California.

It was the last time Ahh would still be “Ahh” before his stroke — with confident smile, microphone in hand, and a heart for every human, young and old.

~ ~ ~

Ahh always took care of his children. And his grandchildren. He drove me and my sister to school most mornings when we were kids. He called me while I traveled, especially when visiting him, always checking on me, making sure I was okay.

Ahh always took care of me.

I hope you have a lot of friends one day, Tom.

My grandfather could see I was a lonely teenager. Quiet, insecure; still growing up, still figuring out life. When he spoke those words to me from the driver’s seat, he didn’t speak them with sadness or pity.

He spoke them with hope. With a confidence that I would, indeed, one day have many friends. Just like him.

At the time, I couldn’t fathom such a thing for myself. After all, I skirted bullies in the halls and hid in bathroom stalls. Deeply insecure by acne and sexuality, I rarely spoke up, especially among the other boys.

It’s hard to make friends — any friends — when you hide so much.

Let alone a lot of friends.

~ ~ ~

I got news of Ahh’s passing while traveling in Albuquerque, of all places. I was finishing breakfast at Village Inn with a friend, helping him move across the country, when I got the text from my dad. I asked to be excused from the restaurant.

Several minutes later, my friend found me pacing the parking lot. And I cried in his arms.

I’d been anticipating that text for six years. Been ready to write this blog for six years. Ever since Ahh slurred on the phone: “Listen to me, Tom . . . “

His passing comes expectedly and as a relief in many ways, his condition having deteriorated greatly in recent months, his life a full one for 92 years, his soul set with Christ, his legacy extended to at least one great-grandchild.

Death is inevitable for all of us. It isn’t shocking.

But then it actually happens. And it is. Leaving behind a world that continues spinning.

Says Donald Miller:

It’s a living book, this life; it folds out in a million settings, cast with a billion beautiful characters, and it is almost over for you. It doesn’t matter how old you are; it is coming to a close quickly, and soon the credits will roll and all your friends will fold out of your funeral and drive back to their homes in cold and still and silence. And they will make a fire and pour some wine and think about how you once were . . . and feel a kind of sickness at the idea you never again will be.

In the six years since Ahh’s stroke, I’ve criss-crossed and polka-dotted America and Canada so many times I’ve lost count. Thanks to all my travels and writings these last six years, including my first book published just a week after Ahh’s stroke, a book Ahh never got to read, I’ve made so many friends. Dozens and dozens of friends.

Friends in most states and major cities in America. Friends in Canada. Friends in the UK and friends around the world.

And not just “see ya when I see ya” friends.

Deep, vulnerable, reciprocating, ongoing, out-of-this-world, made-for-another friends.

Friends like the one I embraced while weeping into his chest in a Village Inn parking lot in Albuquerque.

I can’t believe how many incredible friends — brothers — I’ve made these last six years. I wish I could tell Ahh that his hope for Teenage Tom actually came true (though I’m certain he wouldn’t have been surprised).

Alas, I cannot tell him. Not on this side of the curtain where Ahh will never again be.

Oh, the finality. It’s deafening.

~ ~ ~

My grandmother has often pointed out the similarities between me and her husband. That we were both high school valedictorians, both travelers, both authors. Both with an affinity for the written word.

But even though he was a raging extrovert and I am most certainly not, we forged a similar path with people, Ahh and I. We made friends all over the world.

It’s a strange new world, this one without Ahh. It’s my first real taste of human loss, blessed to have lasted 32 years without personally experiencing this cursed, wispy thing that is death.

I do not like it.

I don’t like this world without Ahh.

I will stare at his 2006 email on my bedroom wall until my final wandering. I will be reminded of his encouragement not to give up on God because God will never give up on me.

I will laugh at the photoshopped picture of him and my grandmother with me at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

I will listen to his inspirational tape that he gave me in college.

Ahh’s memory in images and written words and spoken words will last the rest of my life, though it’ll never be the same as being slipped a golden dollar or smelling the cigar off his collar as we part ways with an embrace.

~ ~ ~

People everywhere comment on my last name; it happened just now where I’m writing at Panera Bread.

Zu-what? How do you pronounce that? Where is that name from???

When people ask of my heritage, I say, “I’m Hispanic.” Sometimes I state it seriously, though it often comes out with a laugh. After all, my light hair and blue eyes reveal much more of my mother’s Polish roots.

But my name — Zúñiga — comes from Mexico. It comes from my grandfather. I’m a third generation Mexican-American, whether I look it or not, whether you say I’m “not really” Hispanic.

My name comes from Ahh, and so much of the rest of who I am comes from him, too. Valedictorian. Traveler. Writer. Speaker. Jesus-follower.

A man with many friends.