I was seven years old when I first felt abandoned. I was young so I didn’t understand all that was happening. I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t get better; I wanted her to be better. I knew that my grandma was sick and went into the hospital often, but one time it was different. She never came out. We had visited her a couple of times while she was still peppy in her hospital bed, but the last visit wasn’t the best memory. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t open her eyes. All she would do was moan in pain waiting for the nurse to bring her some pain meds. That was the last time I saw her alive. I remember the family meeting we had in my room.

“You’re grandma isn’t doing well and what your aunt and I have decided to do is put her in hospice care, she’s had a long life and it’s time for her to relax.” My dad had started with that.

“Daddy what's hospice care?” I remember asking.

He went into detail about how they gave her special medicine and it would take  away all the pain and make her happy before she passed away. I bawled that night. I had never cried harder in my life up to that point.
I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t get better. I didn’t want to accept it. I accused her of leaving me. I didn’t want her to die. I didn’t know how permanent death was. Gone. Forever.

It was a bright Sunday in July, we had just gone to church and were at our favorite  breakfast place, Pancake Eggcetra. My dad had gotten a phone call and left the table; when he came back his eyes were red and he whispered something to my mom. We finished our meal, mine was grilled cheese with bacon, my favorite dish, and my parents announced we are going to go see grandma. We stopped at the 7-11 next door where my parents bought my two brothers and I a roll of Hubba Bubba Bubble Gum and we were off. When we arrived it wasn’t a normal visit, the room felt different.

“Kids, grandma has passed away. She’s in a better place now,” someone had said.

I just sat in a chair, putting more and more gum into my mouth. I didn’t cry. I didn’t talk. I sat there looking at nothing with a feeling of emptiness. “Why aren’t you crying?” my brother, Jonathan. had asked me. I didn’t know, I still don’t know. I had nothing in me to make myself cry. I was empty. She was gone somewhere and I was here. She had left me. It was the first time I had heard the word Leukemia cancer. I didn’t know what it meant. I didn’t know how much it hurt her and how it made her feel. All I know was that she was gone now; leaving me.

“Ladies and gentlemen may I present to my beautiful little bootsie!” Followed by applause as I walked into the room. My grandma and I had just spent the last thirty minutes putting makeup on me. It was my favorite activity to do with her. I would go up to her and say, “Grandma! I want to try on your makeup,” accompanied by my puppy dog eyes and every time we ended up our downstairs bathroom. I would stand on the toilet while she applied blush, eyeshadow, lipstick, and a variety of other items. I would sneak a peek when she wasn’t looking and just love the makeup she put on. When she finished, it was time to parade around the house. I would walk around after being introduced and go up to every person asking if they like my eyes while I stood five inches from their face. When one of my brothers made a boy comment about it, my grandma would throw her hands in the air and say how wrong they were and move me along to my next relative for approval.

When she stopped coming over with my grandpa I first thought it was because she didn’t want to. It made me mad that she wouldn’t come. It took a long time to understand that dead meant gone and never coming back. Eventually I just got used to her absence and finally began to accept that I would never see her again.
Six years later it happened again, but this time it was my grandpa, her husband. When my brother, Robert, became a freshman he went to a school far away; so my grandpa offered to drive him home everyday, and for two years I saw him everyday. When Robert began driving my grandpa no longer needed to drive him home, so he just came over every Sunday. I was annoyed, I wanted to do other things on Sunday but I always was at home with him. I began to take him for granted. I didn’t realize those Sundays would come to an end.

Thanksgiving of November 2013 was the last time my whole family and him had a meal together. He had just turned 82 a couple days before and so naturally we celebrated his birthday then. A week later he came over on a Friday night and him, my mom, and me ate spaghetti and meatballs together. As I was cleaning up, my mom went to the bathroom. He came over to me and put a twenty dollar bill in my pocket and whispered, “You always should have a little walking around money, you never know when you will need it.” When I said thank you he just nodded and put a finger to his lips to signify it was our secret and not to tell my parents. That was him, he would always do those little things and that’s what I remember most about him. How he always cared and did many things to go against what my parents wanted. After I finished cleaning, he left and my mom took me to swim practice.

That was the last time I saw him as his normal self.

He was in the hospital by Christmas, a common cold had turned into pneumonia and brought him into the Hines VA hospital. He was weak from his illness and it brought out his Parkinson’s disease. He wasn’t getting better.
I was sitting in the stands for the pool at Marmion High School  trying to do my homework. It was senior night for swimming and my parents and I attended the last swim meet my brother would have in this pool. As the meet ended, I had an all too familiar conversation with my parents. My grandpa was going into rainbow hospice on Friday morning; it was Thursday night. When we got to the car I started crying. I had a choice to make: see him now while he still may be awake or go Saturday but he would probably be unconscious, similar to my grandma.

I made the decision to see him that night. When we arrived at the hospital I couldn’t bare to see him. I walked in his room and all he was saying was “Where’s my wife, Elaine? I want to leave. Where’s my brother? Where am I?” It was too painful to see him that way. My dad tried to explain that his wife died six years ago and that he hasn’t seen his brother in ten years. The facts that he forgot about his wife and brother made me want to leave, I couldn’t bare to know if he would have questioned who I was. It was an answer I did not want to know. If I hadn’t made that decision to go that night I would never have gotten to see him conscious again.

A week later he passed.

At school I always thought when he did pass, I would get a phone call. I didn’t. That Friday the grade was watching a movie, something about it, though, seemed very weird. The thought of “what if he died right now” kept coming into my mind and what would happen if he did. Time played  games with my mind  all throughout the movie. It was a movie about the Tuskegee Airman who formed their own Fighter Group for World War II. The premise of soldiers in war started the thinking about my grandpa. He was a soldier in a war, I don’t know which one, though. -I didn’t get the chance to talk to him about it.- It was about two months earlier we got assigned to do a family tree in history. We were suppose to ask our relatives about their ancestors and their past for stories to share. I had wanted to ask him but right around the time of the assignment, he went into the hospital and I never got the chance to talk to him about it. Now I was sitting in class watching the movie with the whole grade.

I was sitting next to one of my closest friends at the time, Elise Grande. We were half paying attention to the movie half writing stuff on the desk. She kept asking me what time it was; 12:01,  12:34,  12:47 1:16. Her persistency of asking the time made me feel weird. I don’t know how to even described the way I felt that day. It was around  1:25 when the thought of my grandpa was strongest. I was thinking how I would weave between my classmates to go to the office and talk to my parents. It was like I had a sixth sense. I just knew, whatever it was, something wasn’t right. When the movie was over we went back to our classrooms to wait for the dismissal bell. It took forever but the bell finally sounded. I was suppose to meet my mom and get my eyebrows done for my Confirmation the next week. When I turned my phone on my mom had texted me saying I was going home with one of my friends.

She was going uptown to see a movie with another friend so I was told to join. I wasn’t in the mood to sit through another movie. So my other friend, Veronica Dohr, said she would join me uptown and we could do something until my mom picked me up. We decided to go for sushi. As we were sitting on the couch in Sushi Express she had asked about my grandpa. I told her how he was in hospice and would die soon. The sixth sense feeling came back, but I didn’t mention it. She sat there and listened to me talk. It felt really good to talk about it. When my mom came to pick me up she wasn’t herself. She had some lame excuse as to why we had to cancel my appointment and why she was so late. I didn’t mention how I felt that grandpa wasn’t with us anymore. I didn’t want to know the answer. My grandpa always loved sunsets, it was his favorite part of the day.

There was a breathtaking sunset that night. 

Six-thirty the next morning I was waiting outside my friend Natalie’s house. We were on our way to my brothers’ swim meet to get service hours for school. The day was long and boring sitting at admissions. I was thankful she was with me to help the day move along and to not think about my grandpa.  Seven  long hours later we were dropping her off  at her house. When we got home we were all in the kitchen recapping my brothers’ races at the meet. When we finished there was a long pause, and a look was exchanged between my parents. Finally my dad took a seat and started talking, “Yesterday your mother was visiting grandpa while I was still on my way to see him. At about 1:30 in the afternoon, he took a couple quick and shorts breaths and then he peacefully passed. We didn’t want to say anything yesterday because we wanted the boys to do well at their meet and not be distracted.”

It all made sense then. The way I felt the previous day, I was right and I knew he passed. My family broke into a sob. I don’t know the last time I cried that hard. I couldn’t believe that 82 years of life had just ended in a matter of a few quick and short breaths. I couldn’t help to notice how my whole family wasn’t as upset as me. I remember Jonathan asking, “Why aren’t you crying?” when my grandma had passed. Now I wanted to ask him the same question. My family had known my grandpa longer than I have, so the question of,

“Why weren’t they more upset than me?” still confuses me.

Not a day goes by where I don’t think about my grandparents. The older I get the more I realize how young I was when they passed. How there was so much I didn’t know about them and I won’t ever get to know about. Experiencing death at a young age, made me aware of how permanent it is and has taught me how to cope with traumatic situations. I will always remember my grandparents and cherish the memories I have with them.