It was fresh into the New Year. Snow still on the ground. Breath still visible in the air. Goosebumps form on my body as I enter the warm house from the Antarctic temperatures outside. Being engulfed by the delicious aroma of baked chicken and mashed potatoes, it makes my stomach growl as if I had been starved for days. The clattering of forks and knives on the plates fills the room as everybody got their food out.

“Zar niste čuli (Did you not hear)?”, a sudden boom from a voice echoed through the dining room. My surrogate grandpa, who we hadn’t heard from in a while, had been admitted to the hospital.   

There is a picture of him and I. He was holding my hands up as I was learning how to walk. A smile plastered on both of our faces.

I dreadfully walk into the room, but stop like a deer in headlights. With trembling hands, I continue through the door not being able to see through my foggy vision trying to fight back tears, that are threatening to spill over. The three word that stick in my brain.  Triple bypass. Ventilator. Sedation. All the tubes and wires intertwining on the bed, making its way onto his pale and fragile body in a hospital gown. The white sheets cover him keeping him warm, while his heart fights to work for itself. Wires leading to the beeping of the heart monitor and the tubes to the hissing of the ventilator. The smell of sterile equipment and hand sanitizer overwhelms me. As he fight for his life, I fight to keep from crying. That fight became useless as I feel a trickle of a single tear drop on to my cheek and down my face.

“Hej, gdje si ti?” he says, bringing me a chocolate like he does every time. The creamy and delicious Austrian chocolate, he would give me everytime. He would joke it was only for my mom.

“Can I buy him a chocolate?”, I ask, thinking he would get better and be able to eat the chocolate I had bought him. I was naive to think that, as my mom replies, “You can’t, he won’t be able to eat them”. My mom seeing the reality while reality struck me; he won’t make it. He won’t see me graduate or get married or have kids of my own. He won’t make it because he is too weak to fight the battle of life in which he fought for eighty-four years.   

“Remember, you need to always do a full stop”, he said while I rolled through the stop sign. That would be the first and last time I drove him.  

Standing outside in the bitter temperatures, with people sulking around, I try to contain my sadness. The deep and heart wrenching sadness that feels like a never ending pain. The snow crunches under my boot as I walk toward the casket, a dark wood with a shiny gloss over. It is decorated with flowers from the mourning people who are not ready to say goodbye.

It was the last time I saw him. His blue hands and pale face. His chest rising and falling with the aid of the ventilator. It would be the last time I would say, “I love you”.  

They say you should be happy.

They say you should be happy with the time you got to spend with them.

They say you should be happy when someone dies because their suffering has ended.

They say you should be happy at their funeral because they want you to celebrate their life.  

But how can I be happy when there is a void in my heart that only he can fill.

How can I be happy if all I do is miss him.