My Treasure (Part VII)

“Three months passed, the air grew colder, and Grandpa didn’t get any better. His doctor said he had been suffering a series of mild strokes, which led to speech that wasn’t understandable. To Grandpa his world was slowly slipping away. His home life was gone, and the things he used to do like, trapping beaver, mowing the lawn, walking in the woods, and family hotdog roasts, seemed a world away. I knew the Lord was getting ready to call him to his heavenly home, when he had his final stroke.

Mom and dad tried to tell me how Grandpa’s stroke happened, but I wouldn’t listen. I didn’t want to hear that Grandpa, my immortal treasure, was almost gone. All I wanted was to see him again.

A week before Christmas my dad drove me up north, so I could be with Grandpa. I wished I had listened, when mom and dad tried to tell me about what happened to Grandpa when he had his stroke. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. As I walked into the nursing home, I still noticed the odor of antiseptic. The atmosphere had changed somewhat. Everything looked as though it wore a grey shroud. When I got to Grandpa’s room, the whole family stood along the perimeter of the wall surrounding the bed. I stopped at the door, and everyone looked at me with solemn faces. Thinking I could help make my sad feelings go away, I smiled nervously. I sauntered into the room, passed the curtain that shielded Grandpa’s bed on the right, and turned around to face him. The small and shrunken man in the bed was just a shell of the man that had once been. His body had deflated, as though his soul had left and took everything with it. His right eye was black and blue, but his nose still stood strong. His mouth was open, as if he were about to sing. Both eyes were closed. A feeling of sorrow and sadness overwhelmed me, and my stomach sat in knots. Grandma walked over and stood on my right.

I started to cry, as she hugged me. “It’ll be alright. He’ll be going to a better place soon, a place where his pain will be over, and he’ll be at home again,” she said.

“I know, but I’ll miss him,” I said.

“We all will.”

I went back to Grandma’s and stayed the night. The next morning I was awakened by my mom.

“Wake up, Jill. Jill, come on sweetie. Wake up.”

“Huh?”

“Jill, Grandma just called from the nursing home and said that Grandpa just passed away a few minutes ago. We’re all going down there to have a small devotion in his room. Do you want to go?”

“Yes, I do.”

After the devotion, Grandpa’s body was taken away, but his memories were left behind. In the corner of the room stood his cane. I walked over and picked it up. At that moment, I realized his cane was not a sad reminder of what used to be. Instead, it reminded me of what still remained of Grandpa in the treasured memories of my mind.

THE END