I had bought my pyrography machine a long time ago, had some old wood to use but I was delaying the testing.

Only when I was returning home from my grandfather’s funeral I knew what I wanted to be engraved that day.  He never wanted any special ceremony, no marked grave, but I had this sentence in my head all the trip. “Lead by example”.
My grandfather was someone who had lots of stories to tell, he was a revolutionary and a dreamer that went beyond politics. He was open-minded enough to say that unbelievable was thinking that Earth was the only planet with life. He had high political and social ideals but admitted that we weren’t even close to implementing what he really believed to be a fair world.

He told me about how was the country before the revolution, he told me about how they secretly communicate or schedule meetings, how the government police were always in every corner. Those were the times when no one would be a friend if you talked about freedom or something that may seem more “modern”.

Even before that there were so many stories to tell, about how he grow up from being a kid almost starving and working for food, to learning by himself electronics, new languages and so much stuff in a life where he had a bunch of professions.

I think nowadays my grandfather would be called an entrepreneur, he started a lot of business, and he was always his own boss.

For me the proudest thing is that he was more than that, he was the real  4everstudent. If you saw him by his 90’s asking me about facebook and the internet, he even texted when people half his age were scared of using a smartphone.

He was tired by the end, but always with that light in the eyes if we talked about politics and how the world could be a better place. And everytime we meet he told me about the idea of buying a computer and learn how to do “that thing about facebook”.

I guess my grandfather, in the wisdom of his 90’s knew that he could gather and share all the information he wanted with this awesome thing that is the Internet.

We had a bet between us, who would be “the first” to reach 120 years, and I’m sure that if he didn’t get tired when he did, we would be kicking almost anyone’s ass by using all the social media apps, all the technologies to be learning and sharing like the 4everstudent that he remain until the end.

(He didn’t believe in heaven but if he is there, I’m sure he’s learning or testing something that I don’t even realise exists. Thank you for the example, grandpa, you’re the best!)