I had said that I would talk to him tomorrow. I was wrong. My grandfather died before I was done with classes the next day. Within 11 hours of his death, only two weeks ago, I was back in Los Angeles with my family. I will never again see his face or hear his voice. He will never again tell me how proud his is of me, and I will never again smile at his unnecessary excitement at minute technological progress.

The grief still overpowers me. Days have passed, and I still cannot wrap my mind around the fact that I cannot call my grandpa to see how he is. My mom's dad died before I was born, but my mom's mom remarried before I was born. Death has never hit me this hard; great-aunts and -uncles have passed away, but I was never close to them. I have seen death on the news, but those have just been statistics to me.

I grew up within 10 minutes of all my grandparents. I would see them at least once a week and talk to them every few days. I was incredibly fortunate.

Coming to Brandeis was neither an easy nor a difficult decision for me; I just woke up one morning and said that I would be going to Brandeis. One part that made me nervous was that Brandeis was on the other side of the country. For the next four years, I would be 3,000 miles away from my family. More specifically, I would be 3,000 miles away from four people with whom I had only a limited amount of time left: my grandparents.

For most of my first semester here, I talked to someone in my immediate family every few days. When I came home for Thanksgiving last year, however, I realized that I had been pretty much excluding four people who, in their own words, lived for my cousins, my siblings and me.

Since then, I have called my grandparents once a week. The "Friday calls," as they named our ritual, were more about me than them; more often than not, the conversations would consist of my talking about the week and their telling me how proud they were. Wrinkly though they may be, my personal cheerleaders make me feel great. And knowing that just hearing me talk makes them happier than the "too many channels" on satellite TV makes me feel even better.

Why would I subject you to all this? Most of you do not know me, and probably do not care about my story.

If I, someone who talked to my grandfather weekly, can feel this much pain and regret for not talking to him more often, how much more so will someone who does not talk to his family feel when a close relative dies? We have a tendency here to become so wrapped up in our own busy schedules that we forget about the outside world, whether that outside world is news or family.

Blood really is thicker than water. Your relatives are always there for you. It does not matter if you cannot stand them, because they are the people who made you, biologically or otherwise. There can be no substitution for those people.

People tried to comfort me. "He's with God" did not work. I am alive; when grandpa died, it did not matter to me where he went, it mattered that he was not here with me. Others would say something like, "Good will come from this." Since I subscribe to that belief in any other situation, I begrudgingly agreed.

Lo and behold, some good has come from this. I realized the importance of family and hopefully some of you will share this realization with me, without having to learn it the hard way. Call your grandparents-if they are still alive-and talk to them for 10 minutes. They will gush, and you will feel better for it.