Nea Fane – Un Biet Român Pripășit în America / A Hapless Romanian Stuck in The US

The so-called “bomb” is, in fact, a spherical outdoor wooden stove-slash-grill, a reasonably priced cast-iron contraption my father bought from Walmart. Hence its enduring nickname: Grandpa’s Bomb. Over the years, many movers have raised eyebrows when we assured them, “Don’t worry about the bomb. We know how to dismantle it. We’ll put it in a black plastic bag.”

A couple of Saturdays ago, I was out on the patio, burning wood – specifically, the last three years’ worth of Christmas trees (!), which, as everyone knows, ignite with theatrical flair: crackling pops and dramatic flames. With a glass of single malt in hand, I found myself staring aimlessly into the fire.

Still, the amateur photographer in me stirred. I snapped a particularly striking picture of the flames and sent it to my wife. She came out to join me, and we ended up reminiscing, about past holidays, about times when we were all together, about Grandpa’s gifts: the water dispenser, the grills, those deceptively humble things we hadn’t fully appreciated at the time but came to treasure for their quiet practicality.

As the family’s unofficial photo archivist, I dug through my digital trove and found this snapshot from 2006, in Scottsdale, fire light, my mom, my dad, and Cosmin.

God, the wave of memories that picture brought. It was the winter of 2006, my mother’s last Christmas with us, the last time we were all together.

Then Irina, true to form, voiced one of her sudden deep thoughts:
“Grandma Puicuța left us too early,” she said, sighing. “The whole family dynamic changed. And not for the better. Everything would have been different.”

That set something off in me. A whole night of thoughts, restless, wordless, and unyielding. I tried to capture them on paper, but both my mind and the page resisted, and naturally, by morning, most of them had dissolved. They always seem that way, these moments of memory: fragile, elusive, but somehow also timeless.

I keep trying to picture how life might have been had my mother still been here. One of those persistent what-if scenarios. And the conclusion is always the same: everyone would still be alive.

I know that dwelling on the past like that isn’t exactly the healthiest exercise. And yet, sometimes, I just can’t help myself. Theoretically, I understand I should look forward. But after losing Cosmin, “forward” feels “so unclear, so … transparently wayward, a shrouded, almost spectral illusion.” (Craig Kimball)