At my age there have been plenty of loved ones who have passed on. I don’t know that it affects me emotionally very much. It’s always a sad thing. There’s always a certain level of grief. There is always a hole that’s left in your life once they’re gone.
I was just trying to think of the first person that I can remember passing away. Shortly before the school year began, and just before I turned 11, my parents took us out of schoolfor an emergency trip to our grandparents in Indiana. My grandpa had not been doing very well. He had been having trouble breathing.
By the time we arrived, my aunt, who was a nurse, had rounded up a hospital bed that she put in the living room. Grandpa seem to be his usual self, but he had a drainage tube in his side to help with his lungs. He also seemed a bit more tired than usual.
I wouldn’t have known the word at the time, or what it meant, but he was essentially on hospice care. Although the doctors wanted to keep him in the hospital, he refused. Since there was no hope of them making him better, he demanded they check him out of the hospital immediately. Of course the medical staff wasn’t about to let him do that. But he demanded his street clothes, and let them know in no uncertain terms that he drove himself there, and he would drive himself back home. Whether he was checked out of the hospital, or not. That was grandpa. He knew his time was short, and he wanted to be home when his time came.
With the house full of relatives coming in and out through the day, sometimes us kids burned off our youthful energy by playing outside. When we would come in, it would be to sit up with grandpa to watch a baseball game. It was more than just watching a game. It was just being there. Being in the moment, and in one another’s company.
After visiting for a few days, my parents were out with my grandma to run an errand. I remember being in the kitchen playing Rummy with my brother, sister and a cousin. My aunt had just checked on grandpa, and joined us in the kitchen to see how we were doing. I heard a noise from the living room, and thought I saw something fly across the ceiling of the kitchen, out the back door and into the sky. It wasn’t anything tangible, like a bird, or an insect. It was just something. A glimmer, or a shadow. I jumped out of my chair to look out
to see if I could tell where it went.
My aunt was talking to us; I don’t remember about what. I told her I just heard a noise in the living room. She ran through the house, and told us kids to stay put. I think she had my cousin make some phone calls, and about that time my parents returned home with my grandma. Things got a little frantic in the front of the house while we stayed in the kitchen. I think we all knew what had happened.. By the end of the evening an ambulance arrived to take grandpa away. We knew it was to the local funeral home. Sadness. Somber times. The end of a chapter.
I could probably tell you more about my grandpa, but that would start a whole new topic.
