Day 215: Don’t Forget To Breathe-Part I

A little over eight and a half years ago, my grandfather passed away from Cancer.  I was a senior at NYU.  We joked how he was kind enough to pass over winter break so I wouldn’t have to leave school.  About a week after his passing, I went back to school.

Numb.

I started a class called Writing the Human Experience.  We had an assignment.  “Tell a story,” my professor said.  So for a few nights, I got in my pajamas, slid under the covers, perched my laptop on my legs, and I wrote and cried and wrote and cried.  I ended up with 20 pages and 7 parts.  I called it “Don’t Forget to Breathe.”

Here is part 1….

Part I

I had become so emotionally drained on this journey of mine that I couldn’t seem to fall asleep.  It was the night of Sunday, January 13, 2002.  During that day I had accepted the fact that he was already gone.  His shell of a body was still there, but his mind wasn’t.  He couldn’t even keep his eyes open, and when they were open, they were glassed over and empty.  It was as if I was looking into the depths of nothingness.  His eyes no longer had any color.  It was just blackness.  “Danny ‘Metta’ is here,” they would say to him, and he would turn his head.  I could see the pain.  No words would come out of him, just grunting noises of pain.  Eyes would just close again.

I couldn’t get this vision out of my head.  And amidst all of it were my Grandma’s words, “’Metta,’ do you think that you could say something about Pops when we have the funeral?”  And I recalled her eyes.  I had never seen such sadness when looking at someone.  The glow that Grandma always had when talking with one of her grandchildren was gone.  “Yes,” I answered.  But I couldn’t help thinking about how to get up enough courage to stand in front of everybody.  I couldn’t deny my Grandma this, though.  Out of the four grandchildren, she had asked me to speak.  It was something special, which she felt I could do the best.

Finally around one in the morning, all these thoughts swirling around faded to the back of my min, and I fell asleep.  The phone with the caller ID just happened to be next to the bed.  I was sleeping in my brother’s old room because it had a TV and my Mom suggested that it would help me to fall asleep.  It was January 14, 2002 by then.  The phone rang at 3:10am.  The number was from, “Daniel …….,” my Pops.  “’metta” darling, it’s over,” Grandma said on the phone to me.  I quickly jumped out of bed and rushed to my Mom.  “Mom, Grandma’s on the phone,” I said.  Even before I handed it to her, my mom knew that the Cancer had finally taken his life.

My first instinct was to look up to the sky.  It was official, my Pops was up there now, wherever up there really is.  A friend of mine told me that she read somewhere that when a person who means a great deal to you dies, it is almost instinctual to lookup to the sky; it was like that for me.  Without thinking I looked up to talk to Poppa.  In my mind, I had envisioned my Poppa as a great big head staring down at me, grinning from ear to ear saying, “Everything will be ok.”

The drive to my grandparents’ house was completely surreal.  It was dark out.  I was still looking up to the sky to talk to him.  And I was numb.  I didn’t think that I had cried yet.  I was worried that I didn’t cry.  What kind of a person doesn’t cry when the most important male figure in her life died?  All of these thoughts and stares turned an ordinarily 20 minute drive into an eternity.  I kept looking out the window, into the blackness, trying to imagine what a dead person looked like.  What color would he be?  Would his eyes be open?  I soon found out.

My mother and I walked into the bedroom holding hands.  We were both nervous, but knew that we had to see his body for one last time.  We started to cry hysterically when our eyes got the first glimpse of his corpse lying there.  Neither of us could figure out how to comfort each other.  She had just lost her father.  I had just lost my grandfather, who had taken the role of father for me as my biological dad ran out of my life when I was very young.  A large part of our lives lay there so peacefully, never to wake again.

He was there in the hospital bed that had been brought to the house only a couple of days before because he had grown so weak.  No covers were on him.  He was wearing a soiled blue adult diaper.  His pajama shirt was unbuttoned and revealed his white undershirt.  His head was cocked to the right side.  His left eye was completely shut, while the other was open a little sliver.  His mouth was slightly ajar.  He always slept with his mouth open a little except now he was no longer breathing.

His home health aid said she gave him some pain medication and he went to sleep.  An hour later, his feet turned purple; he died.  His feet didn’t look purple to me, though.  He still looked like he was sleeping.  My mom said, “Daddy, you must be cold.  Let me cover you up.”  So the two of us grabbed the tan velor blanket and covered him to his shoulders.

I was afraid to touch him, but I did.  He was so cold.  Only an hour had passed since he officially died and he was already so cold.  I told him that I loved him and I kissed him on the forehead.  He was so cold.

When they came to take him away, all of us gathered together and went back into the bedroom to say goodbye to him one more time.  Seeing my Grandma grab Poppa’s face to kiss him one more time broke my heart.  Seeing my Mom and Aunt grab Poppa’s hands and kiss him on the forehead to say goodbye broke my heart.  Watching my older brother bring his hands to his face as he began to cry hysterically broke my heart.  I whispered to Poppa,” I love you,” and it broke my heart.

_______________________________________________

I have decided to not end this story here for you.  Though this post is for the Cancer Sucks Blog Hop, I’ve decided that each Wednesday, I will post another part until you have all the pieces of the puzzle.  So make sure to come back next Wednesday, to see Part II.

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