I was 13 years old when it happened. Sure, it was a slow and gradual process but I know exactly where I was and what I was doing when it actually happened. I used to be really into musical theatre. I performed for Syracuse Children’s Theatre for around 6 years and overall participated in 9+ shows. It was the second dress rehearsal of Footloose; the one before we practiced on the stage with microphones. It was a rehearsal I couldn’t miss; one he wouldn’t let me miss. In the end, though, I wasn’t really there. I was worrying, checking my phone every minute, trying to call anyone I knew was with him the second I got a break to, and getting no reply. I knew. I knew it had happened the second I heard the computer generated voice on the other end of the phone instead of my mom’s tired one. I remember crying. It started before she even got there or even told me it had happened. It felt like a part of me was missing. When my mom finally came to get me, she didn’t even have to tell me. She nodded and that was that. We sat outside, crying and hugging, for what seemed like forever.

When I say my grandpa was my best friend I’m not exaggerating or joking. I told him everything, good or bad. I remember calling my grandpa the first time I got my period and how excited he was that I was becoming a woman. He was someone everyone knew and loved. His wake alone felt like it lasted an entire day, the line wrapping around the building multiple times with people who knew him and loved him. My grandpa was a pediatrician, and a very good one at that. He took care of everyone and their mothers. Everyone had a story about him coming to their house in the middle of the night to help them or about showing up to his house on Christmas Eve or him helping the time so and so broke that one bone. They even have an award dedicated for him at the E. John Gavras center for kids with Cerebral Palsy called the Dr. Henry Romano legacy of caring award, one we personally give out to someone every year at a fancy event in a fancy hotel.

He was sick for a very long time. I got to watch as my best friend slowly lost his coloring, slowly lost his appetite (something that at one point seemed never ending), and slowly became skin and bones. The last time I talked to him was on the phone and it was a one-way conversation as he no longer had the ability to speak. I can still hear my grandma’s voice on the other end that night when I called telling me that he couldn’t talk back but that he would hear me. Telling me that he loved me and was so proud of me and the person I’d become. It was different in her voice though, it wasn’t the voice I wanted to hear it from, it wasn’t him.

My grandpa is and always will be my hero. He was the type of person who you’d go to Wegmans with to get orange juice and end up there for hours because he knew everyone. I never heard him tell someone he couldn’t talk to them about their problems or he couldn’t help them or their child or their niece or whoever was sick at the time. He was the type of person who would be there if you wanted advice or even if you just wanted someone to listen and not say anything. He was the type of person who lit up a room the second he was in it. I can only hope that I can, at least in some way, be like him when I’m older.

I’d give anything to have him back in my life. Hitting milestones the past year such as senior ball, graduating high school, moving into college, even having my first article posted on The Odyssey are things that I wish I could’ve had him here for. Losing him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever been through. It’s a topic that is always going to be hard for me. Even with my family, sitting around a table at some Italian restaurant, telling stories. Even listening to the story about that one time his friend Tucker ran into a pole while skiing in Italy and broke his tooth, the story about how he used to be my mom’s high school pediatrician and once a week she had to walk into school with him, the stories about how he used to go to a restaurant and ask for pasta without the sauce because he knew they wouldn’t get it right, and the story about how his mother used to tie a bell to his finger so she knew when he was trying to steal a piece of cheese from the dinner table, hurts.

It may hurt but, I know that it’s the stories that keep him alive. I may have lost my best friend May 5th of 2012 during that rehearsal for Footloose but, he’s always going to be with me in some way. Whether it’s my guardian angel wing necklace I never take off, the tattoo my mom and I have been planning to get to honor his memory, or even just the stories my family will always tell around that table in that Italian restaurant. He’s always going to be there, watching over me as I hopefully make him proud.