Times like these...

So I was sitting at my computer, thinking, about my life and my past and how I'm graduating college in less than one month. Whenever I pictured my college graduation, besides my parents and my siblings and people like that I always just wanted one person to be there, my grandfather.

I remember when I met him, I was 19 years old and I was home for Christmas break. He happened to be in the states for vacation and he told my father that he wanted to meet us. I was hoping that when I met him that the images I had of him, him being the devil, wouldn't be broken, I wanted to hate him. Instead, he was wonderful, we had such a great time with him and I really started to love him. Then he left.

I haven't seen my grandfather since that day and I haven't heard from him in over a year. We used to stay in touch through email, but those became less frequent as time went on and eventually stopped.

Though I tell myself that I don't care, and most of the time I don't, it's times like these when events that I always imagined him attending come up and I'm left feeling jaded.

I know that regardless of whether my grandfather is there or not, my graduation day is going to be wonderful. I'm going to walk across a stage and accept a degree that I worked very hard for. Then I'm going to look out into the crowd and see the faces of my parents, sibling, friends and professors...all the people that cared about me enough to attend one of the biggest days of my life.

I won't be upset, nor will I search for a reason for why he doesn't love me. Instead, I'll leave all of that pain behind me and open up a new chapter in my life. With graduation comes forgiveness and with that forgiveness comes the realization that I may never see or talk to my grandfather again and that's fine.

I'm fine. I'm going to be successful and happy and I will have done it with the help of those that matter and that's what's important to me. Those that matter will never leave me and will always be there when I need them. That's what family is for.