I thought that homework was the worst thing that happened to me that day. But boy was I wrong. I was on my fifth math problem when the phone rang breaking me form the abyss that was my math homework. I didn’t pay any attention to it because people call all the time asking for us to donate to them or to fill out a survey so they can get good ratings from their boss. I didn’t think anything of it until I heard my parents drive off in my mom’s car. I didn’t learn until the next day when I got home from school what had really happened. What happened? Well a drunken 6’4” tall man stumbling down a crack filled driveway hoping to get to his car before he passed out. That, fortunately, didn’t happen. He collapsed before he made it even halfway down the driveway. This man was not a young guy. No, he was nondrinking old man who was my grandpa.

“All he did was get drunk and pass out, what’s the big deal?” I asked not really getting what was going on.
My parents shared a look that I had never really seen before. “Well, when they took him to the hospital they…” she stopped hesitant to tell me the rest. “ They…they found something.” She finished cringing at every word.

“Okay? What did they find?”

“Well they found a very big spot on his pancreas.”

I finally started to get what they were telling me “So he’s got…” I didn’t want to say it. If I said it that would make it real. If I said it that would make it true.

“Yeah.” Sadness spilling from my mom’s voice. No. This isn’t right. This doesn’t happen to our family.

“Oh.” Was all that came out of my mouth. Out of all the things that I was thinking I managed to say one syllable.
A month later things had gotten worse. He got to where he couldn’t walk more than inches at a time. My dad was deciding whether to put grandpa in Angela Hospis. I didn’t want him to go there. Not that I didn’t want him to get better, I didn’t want him there because that’s where the too ill to move went. That’s where the dying went. I never said anything because what would a ten year old know? Grandpa ended up being put in a room at Hospis. It was unsettling to see him this way.  The white gowns with the tiny polka dots that the staff made all the patients wear. Grandpa was all alone in his room. All he had was the window that the staff left open, where he could see the birds and the squirrels and the occasional deer. We went to visit him every week. All week I would take coloring pages and color them the best that I could so that when we went to visit I could hang them up on the bare green tinted wall that looked sad with the blackness of it. I believed that if he woke up and saw something bright and happy that he would be happy and bright and then he would get better. I wish that I could still think so naively. We went to visit one time and he looked like he had been hit by a bus. They had machines hooked up to him and tubes through both arms. He was breathing really heavy like he just ran a marathon and his skin was yellow. He looked so miserable but he put on a happy face to hide his pain. I could always tell when he did that. Sometimes he would wince when we touched him, but then he would go back to smiling and acting like nothing was wrong.

He passed a week later.  We went to his funeral held at a place where they buried all the veterans of war. I remember the beautiful floral arrangements that were set up everywhere and the flags and the salute and the loud shots from the guns. I remember almost every detail but I can never remember crying. I can never remember crying when we went to see him or when I first learned about the situation. I never really cried till that summer when I was at a friend’s house and they asked what had happened recently. I was comforted by them and it felt like that thousand tons of bricks that had been sitting on my shoulders since that day had been lifted.

I still remember every year on my birthday he would give me a coin from his collection. He had given me seven before he was taken from us. One of the worst things is that he had gone into the hospital before any of this started. They had done a scan of his body to make sure that he was doing okay and that everything looked the way it should. They had found small spots on his pancreas then. They never took a second look at them. His cancer had grown from the stage one that it was in when they did that scan to a stage four within a year.
 

I still look back on those days when he was around and I love the thought of him always being with us no matter what.