At the end it didn’t matter if we were in the room when you had to pee 

You didn’t have the energy to hide yourself

We could barely make sense of your words, and you could barely chew the ice chunks I gave you. One. At. A. Time. 

Somehow, you managed to say you wanted vanilla ice cream, and I scooped tiny spoonfuls onto your tongue—your last meal. You tried to hard to sip orange juice through your straw, but could not. 

I love you grandpa. There is a hole. I can feel it wide and gaping already. 

I miss your voice, your jokes and your honesty. I didn’t know the last time you squeezed my hand so tight would be the last time you squeezed my hand so tight. 

I know now when you tried to take the oxygen masks off you had just wanted it to be over, you hadn’t wanted to die hooked up to machines. You had refused hospice (where you could have had a glass of real water, comfortable and softly falling into death) out of selflessness, so your daughter and son could come see you once more, but they didn’t come soon enough. So you died uncomfortable, dry as a bone, hooked up to machines, heeving. 

You had put both hands in the air in surrender, waving goodbye. 

I wonder if at the end you had tried to ask for just a moment alone with grandma, but we couldn’t understand what you were saying, or what you wrote down. I wonder if you knew I was there when you took your last breath. I wonder why you waited until max and joe had gone, you passed just minutes after they’d left, when you and I were alone. I wish I had been holding your hand the whole time, that I hadn’t stepped away to brush my teeth. But I don’t know the minute that you went. Was it when I was checking your pulse, squeezing your hand, checking to see if your heart was still beating. I couldn’t tell if it was my own pulse I was feeling or yours. 

At least I know this—that you knew. That last day with clear speech you had held my hand and said that you knew. “You would do anything for me,” had been your exact words when I asked if I could stay the night on a cot. 

Michael had come in, on a break. A nurse who had cared for you when you first got admitted. You told him you were going to die in the hospital, they they had all decided that. And he bent down, and became small, and looked at you so closely. This is how everyone was with you. You told him who I was again, even though you had already told him before. You told him I came almost everyday to see you. I’m sorry if I repeat myself, like he did introducing me to every nurse as his birthday gift. But I want to remember everything. 

Mostly, I remember that last day. People say you shouldn’t. That he shouldn’t be remembered at the end. But it was the selflessness, despite your thinning wrists and voice that was gone, despite the dying that you continued to give that I won’t forget. The words you did have you used to compliment, to call me sweetheart, to say you loved me, to squeeze so tightly even though you couldn’t sip orange juice. I want to remember you this way. I want to be like you. 

And your eyes, small and bead like—looking directly into mine. With all the fear of dying and joy of life and jolly of your spirit, and hope of heaven and sadness of departing—all of it at the same time. I want to remember this.

And I miss you grandpa. Already. I miss you.