Most families never try to play favorites, but I'm from a traditional Asian family, and my grandfather, being from a different time, made no pretense that I, the eldest male grandson, was his absolute favorite grandchild. I always sat next to him at family gatherings, I always got the most money in my red envelopes from him, and I could literally do no wrong in his eyes. I loved him too. Not to play favorites or anything, but he was definitely my favorite person that was not my mom, dad or brother. He and my grandmother got separated during WW2 and they never found each other, so he remarried.. My step-grandmother had always hated me, from what I assumed was jealousy because of how close my grandfather and I were.

When I was having a tough time with the first year of dental school, on the verge of dropping out, my grandfather got very sick. It was very aggressive cancer. I rushed back to Hong Kong to see him, but never he regained consciousness. On the day he passed away, I was crying my eyes out at the hospital because I never got to say good bye, and my step-grandmother told me that it was all my fault that he got so sick; he died because I was stupid, and was doing so badly in school. In my mind, I knew that was bullshit. My grandfather smoked two packs of cigarettes a day, and that was going to catch up with his body at some point. However, at the time, it just broke my heart. I couldn't function for a couple of days after that, literally just lying in bed, wallowing in tears and self pity.

That experience did make me stronger though. It lit a fire under my ass and motivated me to just get through dental school no matter how much it sucked, so I guess even though she was being a bitch to me, it ended up helping me at the end.