Random Post 1: The Worst Winter Break

After my dad died suddenly when I was just thirteen years old, my world turned upside down. I ended up going to live with my grandparents who became like a second set of parents to me and living with them was truly the best time of my life because they were just so amazing, fun, and youthful. They were the prom king and queen in high school after all… but most importantly, they loved me and my family selflessly and would do anything for us no matter what. In my darkest times, they were the light. When moving across the country to go to USC, leaving them and my mom was the absolute hardest thing to do and almost made me choose a school closer to home which I now wish I had done. Leaving them for the start of college was particularly hard though because just a couple months prior to leaving, my grandfather was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease. I immediately wanted to change my admission decision and try to convince Boston University that I would actually like to go there, but my grandparents assured me that I should go to USC and live in LA like I had always wanted to since I was a young child. 

Coming home for winter and summer break was always the highlight of my year since coming to USC because it meant I got to be with my favorite people in the whole world. Each break that I would come back, my grandfather's memory would deteriorate some more but nothing prepared me for how fast this horrible disease would take one of the most special parts of my life - my grandfather. 

After being back home in Massachusetts for a few days, I had already seen my grandparents a handful of times. My grandfather, for the most part, seemed to be doing okay, except for the fact that he was asking me things like “Who's your mom again?” and “Are we related?” which was all new along with talking to an invisible little boy whom my grandfather would go into full conversation with, staring into space, talking about some big journey that the boy had just gone on. One day, my mom and I were supposed to take my grandmother and grandfather out for the day to a local farm to get some apple cider and apple cider donuts and see some farm animals. However, we got a call from my grandmother, in a shaky and timid voice, saying that my grandfather was okay now but that he had just run away down the street with no shoes on and she had to yell for the neighbor's help to run after him and pull him inside. My mom and I ended up staying the night at their house, in case he decided to run away again. Later that night we couldn’t get him off of the couch to go upstairs to bed, he absolutely refused. So we all slept on the couches in the living room. We all woke up with achy backs to my grandfather getting up and running out the door. We were so in shock at how fast this had all come on. He was just driving a couple of months prior and was going to the gym every day up until this point and all of a sudden, it was like we had lost him overnight. Later that day, he started talking gibberish. No one could understand any of the distorted words or sounds coming out of his mouth and he grew frustrated that we couldn’t understand him. He then started to get agitated and lunged at my mom and I's cell phones. We decided to call an ambulance to take him to the hospital and when the EMTs and firemen came in, he thought that they were his old friends from high school, so he gladly got on the gurney and never came back home. 

After spending my entire winter break going from sleeping at my grandmother's house to spending my days in the hospital, trying to understand my grandfather's progressing gibberish and confusion, and having to watch him essentially starve and try and eat his hospital bed blankets because he couldn’t keep down any food, my family made the heartbreaking decision to bring my grandfather to hospice. When we brought him to the hospice house, which was a very quiet, dimly lit, and serene place, I had no idea that when they put his sedatives in for the night that it would be the last time I would see his eyes open. Had I known this, I would have been holding on to him for dear life, probably crying hysterically, so maybe it’s better that I wasn’t told what was happening, but somehow my grandfather knew. 

I was sitting at the foot of his bed as the nurse came in and injected his sedative. After a few minutes, he started to relax and grow sleepy. He didn’t say anything, he just laid upright in the bed, with a peaceful look on his face, reaching his hands up towards the sky, like someone was reaching for him and he was trying to grab their hand. He then turned his face to me and slowly raised his arm up with all the energy that he had left in him, waved to me, and then shut his eyes. I thought nothing of it at the time because I thought we would have weeks or even months left with him in hospice. What I didn’t know, but I have a strong feeling that my grandfather did know, was that was the last time I would see him alive. It was a wave goodbye. A goodbye from the person who lit up my life during darkness, who would give up everything for his family, who the hundreds upon hundreds of people showing up for his funeral would call the greatest, funniest, and most legendary guy they had ever known. One of the best and most special parts of my life. One of the most painful and heartbreaking goodbyes I will ever have to say.