I remember when I came out in the garage to talk to my mom just like any other day. She had a look on her face, and it wasn’t a good one. I looked into her eyes, it was as if her life had been taken out from under her. She looked like she was going to speak but couldn’t catch the words.

“Grandpa isn’t doing so well, he’s in hospice, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to get better,” she explained to me in the softest voice possible.

“What do you mean he’s not going to get better?” I shouted in the roughest voice possible.

My mom explained to me how my grandpa’s cancer had come back and that we will have to go visit him in South Carolina as soon as possible because no one knew how long he would have. When she then told me that hospice is place where they put people they know can’t get better, I couldn’t handle myself. I could feel the air blow up into my lungs as I was thinking about the one guy that was there for me, the man that was my father figure when my dad wasn’t, the one man that always said he’d be there for me was going to be gone soon. I broke.
“Are you ready to leave?” my mom wheezed out of breath from hauling her compact bags to the car.

we left at about 10 o’clock as my brother, sister, mother and I piled into the car. It was going to take about eleven hours to drive to Myrtle Beach, we ended up getting there in about four-teen hours. It seemed to be the longest one yet, even though we have drove to the Carolinas multiple times to see my grandpa. I love the smell when you get close to the beach and you can smell the water- the feelings you get when you’re back to old places, and you just don’t want to ever leave. I wanted to stay there forever with my grandpa, and never let go.
The first thing we did when we got to Myrtle beach was go to the hotel and get everything in place to see my grandpa. The hotel was only about five minutes away from the hospice my grandpa was staying at. We went to his room and what I saw was something I’ve never expected, i didn’t even know how to respond. I saw my grandpa, only he wasn’t my grandpa-he didn’t have any life in his face, his bags under his eyes were basically swollen and purple they were, the man who was once over two hundred pounds was now just below one fifty. The man I knew looked to be gone before my eyes.

“Allie boo, I missed you guys so much!” he yelled in a weak voice unlike what I was used to.

I wasn’t sure what to say; He looked so different but I didn’t want to offend him or make him sad in any way possible. I decided to just act like nothing has changed, and everything was going to be okay. We didn’t get to stay in South Carolina long, we had to go back to Ohio just a week in a half after we got there. It was so hard saying goodbye; knowing that we had to go home and knowing that it would be the last time I would see him.
My mom’s birthday is on June fourth; we always celebrated birthdays as a family so everyone was over at our house. That night at about eight o’clock my mom got a call on her cell phone I immediately saw the face on my mom then I saw the quiver, then I saw the tear. I knew in my gut that he called to say that he had passed but I couldn’t get up enough courage to ask and find out the truth once and for all.

The next day I woke up with nothing on my mind, then it hit me; he was gone.