Coming to terms. For the first time, Bekah Martinez has publicly addressed the loss of her grandfather and the grief she’s experienced in the years since his unexpected death.
In an Instagram post, the 25-year-old reality star posted a photo of her infant son and another of herself alongside her grandpa when she was young. Martinez referred to her late relative as an Indigenous American who “would collect traditional baskets and other items” and “even taught himself how to weave.” She then continued to dive further into who he was as a person and how his passing affected her long-term.
“I’ve rarely talked about him publicly. We were extremely close and he was murdered when I was 17. He was only 59,” she wrote on Wednesday, July 29. “He was a dreamer and a doer; a maker, an artist. He taught me how to bake Challah bread. Flowers came alive in his hands; he was a master florist. He built a home in the mountains with his own two hands.”
Martinez continued, “All of the memories with my Papa are the happiest and most magical, but I always cry at the thought that he’ll never meet his great-grandbabies. He would have loved to see Franklin like this. One of the hardest parts of losing someone is losing all the years you expected to have with them. You feel robbed of memories that should have been.”
In closing, the Bachelor alum noted how grief “isn’t linear” because “sometimes 8 years feels like a lifetime, and other days like today, it feels like no time at all.”
The UC Irvine student is now a mother to daughter Ruth, 17 months, and son Franklin, 1 month, who she shares with boyfriend Grayston Leonard.
Though the couple just welcomed their youngest in June, Martinez is already thinking about expanding her family further. On Sunday, July 26, she admitted that she wouldn’t be opposed to adoption.
“Gray has multiple close family members who are adopted, so he’s definitely open to it and I am as well,” she wrote via her Instagram Stories after answering a fan’s question. “We are also interested in fostering — I was actually signed up for a potential foster parent intro class when I found out I was pregnant with Frank! So we decided to put that on hold.”
