When I was little, my grandfather would tell me all kind of bed time stories. These stories would range from stories about myths about princes rescuing beautiful princesses to stories about our ancestry. One particular type of story that I remembered and liked very much was the stories about his father, my great grandfather. Some nights he would tell me only a portion of great grandfather's story and some other night he would tell me another. Night by night, I learned so much new things about my ancestors that I have never knew before. Night by night, my knowledge on my family history grew more and more. When I was older, these stories eventually stopped. I “grew” tired of them and my grandfather knew this because I would fall asleep before he can even finish a story. So one night, my grandfather decided to tell me one last story about great grandfather. In this blog post, I'm going to share that last story.
This story took place around 60 years ago. My great grandfather was on his ship. This ship was magnificent. It was a beautiful ship with red sails that shine like the sunset. This was no ordinary ship, it was a ship filled with treasure hunters. My great grandfather was one of them. My grandfather told me that when my great grandfather was young, he had this wild dream of traveling the world looking for treasures from everywhere around the globe. My grandfather also explains that great grand father was a type of person that never give up on a dream. And so, my great grandfather bought a ship in Shanghai with the money that his father left for him after dying of illness.
My great grandfather started out with only one person in his crew- his best friend. At the time, everybody thought that my great grandfather was crazy. They thought his ideas and his crazy imagination was going to bring him to great misfortune and eventually to his deathbed. My great grandfather didn't care what everyone said because he knew that there was much more to the world than staying in the village farming every single day. He wanted some excitement and he was not going to let anybody bring his dream down. His mother who was still alive at the time, his deceased father, and his best friend were the only people that believed in him. His best friend was about the same age as him and have known him since childhood. They looked out for one another which is why his best friend stood right beside him when he started his grand adventure.
My great grandfather knew he needed a crew and so he started out his adventure finding people to go along with him. Starting out with only his best friend, the numbers of his crew mates began to add on. One by one, as he traveled to new places, people started to get added on to his crew. Each of these people became one of my great grandfather's greatest treasure. They became a family to him. After many years on adventures with his crew mates and after years of finding all sort of riches and treasures, he decided to head back home. He went to the place where everything began: Shanghai. His crew mates stood by him because none of them wanted to depart from each other so they all decided to go back to Shanghai with my great grandfather before finally departing from one another as a final honorable farewell to my great grandfather. As they were getting close to Shanghai, a giant storm clashed with the ship. My great grandfather soon woke up on a unknown land. That clash with the storm took everything away from him. His ship, his friends, and even his memories.
When my great grandfather woke up, all of his memories were gone. He looked around and saw thousand of scattered parts of a ship's remaining. He couldn't remember anything not even his own name. The only thing that stood by him was a certain thought of mind. A thought of a promise that he made with a group of people. He couldn't remember who these group of people were but somehow he knew that these people were very important to him. He couldn't remember the promise that he made either, but nonetheless he knew it was something important too. After a long while of confusion, people began to show up. They started yelling in their native tongue and soon enough more and more people began to show up. Everybody looked astonished about what had happened by their shoreline. They took my grandfather to their village, and began asking him thousand of questions. Strangely enough, these villagers seem familiar to my great grandfather. He understood perfectly what the villagers were saying. My great grandfather soon began to ask the villagers questions of his own. He asked them where he was and the people replied that he was home. My great grandfather was confused, but somehow he knew that these villagers weren't lying. The village and the houses all looked so familiar and soon a piece of his memory flew back into him. He was in Shanghai. The place where everything began, but that was all he remembered. The villagers soon came to realized that my great grandfather had lost his memories, and so everybody decided to help my great grandfather regain his memories back. Years had passed but nothing new came to my great grandfather. He began living a pretty comfortable life at the village and had a honest living.
Many people that have knew my great grandfather when he was little told him all about who he was. They also mentioned that his mother had passed away a few years after he had left on his ship. My great grandfather stared at them with a confused look on his face. Tears would always start to fall whenever he hear of these stories from the villagers. He wanted his memories back, but nothing helped. My great grandfather remained “broken” for years until he met my great grandmother. She brought life back to my great grandfather and they started a family together. They had a daughter and two sons. One of their son is my grandfather. Day by day, my great grandmother would think of crazy ideas of helping my great grandfather gain his memories back. My grandfather told me when he was little, he can remember that his mother would always come up with weird methods of helping my great grandfather to remember his memory. None of the methods really worked, but grandfather told me that his father was really happy nonetheless because someone was there to entertain him everyday.
One day, great grandfather took his family on a vacation. They were on a big ship filled with many people. That was the day when my great grandfather got his memories back. How did this happened? Well, there was something about being on a ship with the wind breezing by every few second that got to him. My grandfather told me that he remembered on that the day of vacation when my great grandfather entered the ship, he stood really still with his eyes closed. My great grandfather stood there for hours without saying anything. After a long time passed, my grandfather slowly opened his eyes. He looked straight up into the sky. Tears began to fall right from his eyes. He had remembered everything.
From that day on, my great grandfather always go to the the shoreline where his broken ship was and looked out into sea giving out tears into the empty air. One day, my grandfather asked him why he always go there. And so every night, my great grandfather told my grandfather how everything started. Each night, he told him different adventures he had went on. My grandfather would listen intently to his father and memorized every word that my great grandfather had told him. One night, my great grandfather had finish telling my grandfather every story but one. The last one was the day of the tragedy. He told my grandfather what had happened within the ship the day that the ship clashed with the ship that took everything away from him. He told my grandfather that he had made a promise to his friends on the ship that night. Years later, my grandfather told me that great grandfather died with a smile on his face.
At the time when my grandfather was telling me this part of the story himself, I immediately asked him what was my great grandfather's last promise to his crew mates. My grandfather remained silence when I asked him that, and just told me that I already knew the answer. I didn't know what he meant by that when I was young. Now that I'm older, I came to realize that this promise was much more than just a promise. It was a vow of eternal friendship. I knew this now because I know how it felt to be with a group of friends that you see as family. Laughing with them everyday made me realize just how precious the moments that you have with them really is. This story made me realize that my great grandfather was not a ordinary "treasure" hunter of gold and jewelries, but instead a "treasure" hunter of friends that he can consider as “family”.
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