Tainted with Desolation It all started with, “We’re going to Houston; your pawpaw has cancer. ” When I had walked into the room, I could already tell that something was wrong. The serenity had drained from every, single being. The next few moments turned my entire world upside down. Those eight simple words held such a strong complexity. Who knew that they had the ability to change our family forever. Being in hospitals always terrified me–the bland walls, the sterile smell, and the despondency throughout the hallways. Seeing all the other families sitting in that waiting room, along with my own, was heartbreaking.
Engrossed in my own thoughts–“What if he’s worse? Are they speaking with the doctors? What if they tell us ‘We’ve done all we can; take him home’? “–I barely saw when my mom came back for my brother and I. “C’mon. Let’s go back to the hotel. ” I became frantic. “But what about Pawpaw? I want to go see him! ” My mom replied with the stereotypical, “He doesn’t want you to see him like this. ” It is crazy to think that smoking takes nearly six million deaths every year. For my grandfather, cigarettes took over his lungs, his liver and crept towards every other organ it could touch.
Even without physically seeing him laying in that hospital bed, white sheets covering his body, I could mentally picture how sick he might have looked. I could vividly picture his hair loss, swollen legs, pale skin, and frail body. My most vividly, spoken memory will always be hearing the doctor’s footsteps down that abandoned hallway headed towards the boxed room every family is given for those last few moments of hope. I remember thinking, “Oh my God… please don’t say it’s over, please.
Just tell us he made it. Don’t say you did all you could,” yet that is exactly what we were told next. I’m sorry. We did all we could, but his heart keeps crashing. It’s time. It’s time to say your goodbyes. ” Because he was gone, I spent most of my time trying to follow in his footsteps. Taking his characteristics into the thought, I tried to become the selfless person he was, but it was not possible. No matter how hard I tried, I could never be him. It took me awhile to travel back to the reality that just because he is gone, I do not have to become him to keep his memory striving. I could be myself and remember him all the same.
Ultimately, my faith in God had never been tested like it was when he passed away. I could not stop asking God, ‘Why someone like him? ” Pawpaw was never one to complain about anything–business, sickness, fatigue, etc. –but seeing him, the night before my grandparents left for Houston, in his favourite leather chair, like any other day, watching the evening news station put a heaviness in my heart, my mind, and my soul. He was trying beyond his own capacity to hide his pain and suffering, for us. To see someone so broken and wretched compared to their usual exuberance and serene was gut-wrenching.
I still hold on to that memory of sitting behind him, faking invisibility, to surveil and anticipate his next move as if he were the prey to my predator. I sat, and I waited for the breakdown. All I could do was stare. I had spaced out all other thoughts to only the ones revolving around him, because even in the next few months, my entire world did solely revolve around him. Before his passing, I never went through the cliche “You don’t know what you have until it’s gone. ” I had never gone through the grief from having lost someone so dear to me.
I was so broken, am still so broken, that I do not remember eating, sleeping, or speaking for days. This was the beginning of a downfall my family, collectively, never saw coming. It took me months, maybe even a few years, to realise two things: that without Pawpaw this family was going to fall apart and that the glue holding this family together had been scraped off as if we were an art project. For months after, and still to this day, hearing his name, thinking of him, hearing his laughter or his infamous cough, or seeing his smile in my mind, tore the last bits of my heart that has his name etched across them like a tattoo.
They say time heals, but mentally you will always be broken. Your heart is always going to feel the pain. When you go through something difficult like death, it is hard to hold strong to your faith in God, because you want to ask the infamous “why” questions–‘Why him? Why not me? Why our family? Why now? Why… just why? ” And even six years later, I find myself troubled when it comes to thinking that the person I trusted the most, that I had the most faith in, who believed in me, is physically not here anymore. Abraham Lincoln once spoke, “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
After a few days, I realised that in life we do not have a choice in the events–catastrophic or prosperous–that occurs. We are obliged to live life like a butterfly – take a rest, but never forget how to fly. Individually, we must take each and every day one step at a time. Living for tomorrow will only waste away today. So, yes, it may have taken me longer than an hour, a day, a week, a month, or a year, and it may take me a decade, to finally come to terms with the fact that he’s gone. However, though I may always be broken, even just a little bit, my faith in God is stronger now than it ever was before.
