Please please please please…….

So this is my first blog and it is about one of the hardest thing i had to go through. Its pretty personal and reveals a lot about what i was going through so i hope making it public was a good idea...



Please please please please…….

These words spill out of my mouth and run through my mind with a sense of urgency like life depends on it. This time it might.
Maybe if I say it or ask enough times, it will come true. Someone could answer my calls and give me reassurance. Some sort of comfort or guarantee that things will be ok and I will have my answers.
For now I guess they can’t be answered just like something’s can’t be avoided. Like they sickening feeling you get when you stare a dying man in the eyes. Especially, when he’s your grandfather.

Let’s back track a bit:
About week ago I was doing much of what I normally do. Wake up hangover, get dressed horridly then to work were I generally put the least amount of effort as possible to look like I’m actually busy; followed by another night of self-indulgence. It was my life and I wasn’t looking for much more. I had what I needed maybe not what I wanted, but just enough of what I needed to know that I was alright.
Then the call came. My mother’s voice was unlike her usual tone. Slow and calm but slightly anxious. She had told me that my grandfather while at his house had suddenly fainted. After she went to go visit him in the hospital they let her know that an x –ray would reveal what the problem was.
She told me he wasn’t the same. He spoke different and could barely remember what happened. “He isn’t the same…he ask me the same question 5 times.”
That’s what I remember most of that day, just disbelief that the man who served in World War 2, worked construction for nearly thirty years, followed by building his own business ground up for another 20 years could be sick. The man was a machine he never stopped working, ever. I remember seeing him always breaking down and building up all sorts of motors, Hands greasy starring at the metal block meticulously, quietly analyzing everything before making his next move. I remember him repairing and painting everything you could imagine in that small house he built for his family. Sometimes I just remember him sweeping the driveway, smiling at me as I got home from elementary school. He would hug me and say something in Spanish that I never understood.
The first few times I visited him I couldn’t tell why everyone was so worried, I had seen him in the hospital for routine things, but he had always came through…always. But this time my uncles looked at him different. They would stare at him a long time then move to the window and stare into the ocean view window even longer.
What was it they knew that I didn’t?
The next time I went to visit him I experienced the questioning my mother had told me about. He asked me the same question 4 times.
“you work today, mijo?”.
“ No grandpa, I am off”.
” That s good”. Each time with a sincere reply; genuinely glad that I had the day off to go see him. It hit me then. This wasn’t the normal hospital stay.
A few test and couple of visits later led me to today. My grandmother was in the room with him. All was quiet, nothing more unusual than what I had previously seen or experienced. I asked about the final test they did this morning and she told me that they had found a cancerous brain tumor. We talked for a bit about treatment and what the doctors told them about an hour before I got there. No one else in the family had heard the news yet. We suspected, but wanted all test to be done before assuming anything. “They found cancer in my brain” my grandfather told me, pointing to his head. We stayed quiet for a while.
When he asked if I could help him move, I went over to grab his hands. He couldn’t pull himself up, so put my arms behind him and bring him close so I could adjust the pillows behind him.
I adjusted the pillows and was about to lean him back down, but he didn’t let go of me. I didn’t notice he started crying until I recognized the sound. He held onto me for about a minute. I could feel his tears on my shoulder. That moment seemed to last forever.
He spoke to me in Spanish then in English, now holding my hand. Eyes full of tears…he was scared. Scared he never see his family again, scared that he wasn’t strong enough for what was happening, scared that he knew there was no stopping the inevitable future. Eyes that pleaded with me to not let this happen to him. We hugged even longer this time and I told him not be scared and that everything would be ok. I told what he needed to hear.
I held his hand until he fell asleep, watching him quietly breathe. After a while, like my uncles, I went to the ocean view window and started crying.