Have you ever lost someone and you wish you could have spent more time with them? Well, that’s what I went through with my grandfather. To give some back story, my grandpa was 74 when he died. He died on December 5th, 2020. He would be 78 years old if he was still around today. He lived about an hour away from us. This all started when he was walking around in his complex and fell. When he fell no one was there to help him up since he lived by himself. This made his stage 4 pancreatic cancer come up into his lungs and fill them with fluid. His neighbors noticed him on the floor in the morning the next day, but he was already in bad condition. He was rushed to the emergency room, and the medics tried to get as much fluid out of his lungs as they could. It was really difficult for him to breathe, so they had to have a device that someone would have to stand by and pump in order for oxygen to be able to enter his body properly and keep him breathing.

After the hospital, he was able to come over to our house which is where he passed away peacefully. A truck came by and dropped off some things that would be needed to take care of him. They gave us a bed and a machine to manually breathe for him. We all tried to have the best time we could with him while he was there, but he was bedridden. He wasn’t very mobile and was asleep for most of the time. When my mom went to bed, it was up to me and my dad to take turns sleeping and looking after grandpa. I was up until around 2 in the morning and my dad stayed up a bit later. He told me to go to bed and get some rest since I had looked after him for a few hours previously. When I woke up, he was gone. My dad had let him go because he knew he wasn’t going to live anymore. I didn’t know this at the time and thought that he would possibly survive. We would be able to go do something and hoped that he would still be around after this. I was 11 at the time, and I had to take off from school for a bit to cope with the loss of my grandfather. He did smoke a lot, which didn’t help his health and had been doing so since 8 years old. The amount of grief that our whole family had was immense. It was too much to handle at once because it all happened so quickly. We had a memorial for him at our house and everyone from my dad’s side had come since my grandpa was from my dad’s side. Everyone couldn’t believe it at the time, and we were all so devastated. When the time came to cremate him, we all got a little bit of his ashes. My cousin had gotten me a necklace with a cross that you could put ashes into, so I know I wear that all of the time. I never take it off. It has a rubber O ring on the top so water doesn’t get through to his ashes and disintegrate them. It has broken a few times, but I have always fixed it. I won’t take it off for anything unless it is absolutely necessary. He holds a special place in my heart, and I hope that he knows that I hope that he died in a way that was peaceful and died at a place where he wanted to pass away.

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