Something in my grandfather’s struggled breathing suddenly shifted. It was almost as if he was counting down to his last breath. His body had begun shutting down.
I had been hovering over his hospice bed that afternoon, praying for him and whispering encouragement. His caretakers told us he likely had no more than two weeks to live.
He would be gone that day.
Pancreatic cancer had taken so much out of the vibrant 78-year-old man. It stole his lucidity, too. We had learned of his diagnosis less than two months prior. It was all so sudden. But the news that his struggle would soon be over was welcome. It destroyed me to see this giant of a man suffer so much pain and confusion.
My grandfather was my hero. Still is. He’s the greatest man I’ve ever known, the most consistent presence in my life. Whenever my whole world seemed to be falling apart, he was always there to help hold me together.
I watched him that day as the hospice staff and family members attended to him. It had been a long month. I could see the pain as his chest lifted and fell. I couldn’t bear to see the strongest man I knew hurting so much.
I held his hand and prayed. I combed his hair back a little. With tears streaming down my face, I told him I was there. I told him it was okay to go whenever he was ready.
I’ve never said anything more sincere in my life.
Over the next hour, the hospice room filled with family. My aunt and uncle, my sister, my mother, and cousins. In that moment, he was surrounded by so many of the people he loved.
We stood beside him and watched our hero turn into a memory.
It was exactly how he would have wanted to go.
For most of my life, my grandfather was the person who always showed up and fixed things. That afternoon, I couldn’t take away his pain. There was nothing I could do to fix what he was facing.
All I could do was be there for him at the end of his life, the way he had been there for me since the beginning of mine.