The small blue circle sat on the desk. I stared at it. Slowly I found my fingers were reaching towards it. The cellophane crinkled as my fingers pressed down, tears welling up in my eyes. He was gone. He was dead, and he wasn't coming back.
Slowly curling my fingers around the mint, I lifted it off the table. It had been three days and still I couldn't face the fact that when I returned to my grandmother's house, he wouldn't be there to greet me as well. I unwrapped the mint and slowly slid it into my mouth, and I started to cry again.
I was three years old and I'd just gotten the shoulder from my dad. Telling me no was one thing, but laughing about my request was another. Dado had hobbled up behind me, two pale, crinkled fists outstretched. Wrestling my emotions back, I smiled and chose the right hand. he opened his fist and there sat a blue mint, Brach's insignia on the wrapper. I smiled and took it, popping it into my mouth and savoring the flavor. Dado smiled, his brow wrinkling. He placed his palms on the swing and, shaking with effort, sat himself down gently. Sitting back and relaxing momentarily, he smiled to me, beckoning me to sit with him. I crawled onto the swing and curled up beside my grandfather, feeling the hair on his arm tickle me and my foes faded into nothingness.
I opened my eyes to find the wrapper of my mint clinched tightly in my hands. The bowl in the hotel lobby was filled with assorted candies, those blue drops among them. My aunt came up behind me, astonished.
"I didn't think they made those anymore," she said.
"I--" I sniffed. "I didn't either." I took another from the bowl, nearly dropping it from my quivering fingers. The wrapper crinkled again and I smiled.
I looked back at the hotel counter and jar of candy. I hadn't seen one in years, for they'd stopped selling them independently. But there they were, stuffed into a bag with lesser candies, in the hotel where we were trying to find places for our relatives to stay for his funeral. A woman in the lobby started singing, and as the last of the mint in my mouth disappeared, I began to sob.
I was fifteen, and I'd been forced into singing--again. It was what Jonathan did, and it was cheap, so I did it. My grandmother had spent almost an hour wearing me down, and she finally got me to agree to do chorus. The Christmas concert was beautiful. We sang in the church and my freshman choir was well-known as the past in five years. Not only that, but Jonathan was directing a song that night, one that he himself had written. All went well, and the family was waiting outside of the church. Jonathan ran ahead to talk with some friends while I walked with my father and Dado. Mimi came out of the church, nearly running. I looked up to greet her, but she walked right past me.
"Jonathan!" she yelled, catching up to him. "You were so good..."
I sank into my usual hole of middle child invisibility, but I heard a soft voice cry out. "What about Gina?" Dado called. "She was amazing too." And when Mimi ignored him, he took me into his arms and whispered in my ear, "You are amazing," he said, "and don't let anyone make you feel otherwise."
Not too much more than a month later, he had his heart attack. He got weaker by the month, and by June he made the decision to come off his dialysis. Just like that, he had dissolved from my life.
I had been staring at the jar for some time now, and finally decided to pick out all of the transparent blue mints that I could find. Stuffing them in my pockets, I exited the hotel, unwilling to take my hands off of them.
My family hasn't changed. They still would rather laugh or bring me down or ignore me rather than build me up. And while Dado isn't here to tell me I am amazing, there is a part of me that still whispers his words whenever the world drags me down. It's almost like an aftertaste of peppermint that reminds me that Dado thought I was amazing, and that supersedes anything anyone else has to say.
