I watched the rain roll down the window as the tears rolled down my cheek. I didn’t even bother to wipe them away, I simply let the dreary fall weather match my mood. Normally, I would welcome the warm drops that decorated the car I was riding in. I am a pluviophile after all, meaning I find peace and comfort in the rain and therefore it is almost always my favorite kind of weather. Today was different, though. Today the rain only seemed to mock my despair and grief as I silently rode along with my best friend, Garrett. He said nothing as we ventured to get my younger brother. We knew each other very well and I think he knew that no amount of words would ease my pain at all, so we just sat in a comfortable silence on the damp road that led to the church my little brother was in.

I had learned that evening that my Grandpa Oakley, my last remaining grandparent, was dying in a hospital. In the fall of 2008 my grandparents on my father’s side were both murdered on the same night, and thirteen months later my grandmother on my mother’s side died of a heart attack. There I was, seven years later on another fall day, my father informing me over the phone of the impending death of my last remaining grandfather. Apparently fall was a bleak time for me.

After Garrett and I picked up my little brother from the church, we drove back to my house, but the ride was different this time. This time I couldn’t cry and let my emotions do whatever they wanted, I had to be there for my little brother and answer any questions he had. “What is Grandpa Oakley in the hospital for?” He asked, tears flooding his eyes with some understanding before I even answered the question. I explained to him what I understood to be true, that our grandpa was in the hospital for an infection of some sort and a giant tangled mess of heart problems and kidney failure. I avoided the specific topic of the doctors almost guaranteeing that he would not survive the night because I didn’t want to have the burden of telling him and I thought it better for my parents to let him know anyway.

When Garrett dropped my younger brother and I off, my dad was already there waiting for us so he could take us to the hospital. The trip was about two and a half hours long, which left me a long time to reflect on the life of my last grandpa and what I knew of him.

The first thing anyone would notice about my grandpa was his size. He was a large man all around. He was six feet tall and well over three hundred pounds, but everybody who knew him knew that his size was nothing to be afraid of; he was just a giant teddy bear. He was so kind to everyone all the time in his own special way. He had a voice that you could hear from a mile away and his lack of education in his youth left him coming up with his own unique set of vocabulary. Up until the very end, everyone who knew him loved him and he loved everybody. He wasn’t very hygienic, so the hugs he insisted on when he was about to leave weren’t always the most pleasant smelling, but they were the most sincere. When my grandpa gave you a hug, it was like he was trying to make the love of every person in the entire world flow through his giant arms into your body and they would leave you feeling warm and happy for the rest of the day. He always had absurd stories to tell, and the older he got the less they would vary. During the last few months of his life he was down to about two stories that he would tell over and over, but nobody ever complained, they just smiled and nodded along to the embellished facts.

However, none of those stories were the most memorable about him. The most memorable thing about him was his hands. His hands were almost the biggest thing about him, second only to his heart. His hands were mammoth, and dwarfed everything they touched. It was almost humorous to watch him shuffle cards when he was playing card games, as he often insisted on doing, because the cards got lost in his overwhelming palms.
I thought of all those things as I silently sat in the car on the way to the hospital. I didn’t want to think of what my grandpa would look like laying in the bed or anything that would be hooked up to him, so I just thought of all the good things about him. One last memory floated to mind right as we pulled into the hospital.

“Ah Victoria, my sweet Victoria,” my grandpa said, in his not quite focused, almost distracted sort of way. “Did you know that you were named after your great grandmother, Queen Victoria?” I rolled my eyes a little and chuckled. I had heard about this story a million times and I knew that it had no truth to it, but I humored him each time anyway.

“Yes grandpa I know,” I said smiling at him and almost being able to see the gears in his head shift to some other topic that would make him smile.

This final memory brought a smile to my face for perhaps the last time as we pulled into the hospital parking lot and made our way up to his room.

The hospital was fairly sizeable, with three or four stories and even though it was nighttime, the inside was very bright with a light earth tone colored theme. The entire place smelled like fear of germs; a whiff of rubbing alcohol here, the smell of too many cleaning chemicals used at once there; it was not pleasant. Everything about the hospital was cruel and unwelcoming. The constant light and bright color scheme was cold and gave off the suggestion of a place one would try to escape in order to go to a place that was warm and comforting. When we arrived at his room, I found it to be the same exact feel as the rest of a hospital, like a limb growing off of it whose only difference was a bed for the patient and a few chairs here and there for the guests.

As I was looking around, I felt uncomfortable for my grandpa. This place was too clean and cold for him. He wasn’t exactly the best housekeeper, and to have him lying in a place that even a germ or bacteria cell would be afraid to enter seemed wrong. I never liked the way my grandpa kept his house, but now a mess seemed like a necessary sentiment and I was angry that the hospital was so clean.

The people that were in the room were mostly unfamiliar. They greeted me with awkward hugs and claimed to be friends or relatives of my grandpa in one way or another, but I had never seen them before and I hated them for being there. I felt like they were taking time away from the people who actually cared about my grandpa and wanted to be there for him, so after their awkward greeting I didn’t speak to them in hopes that they would go away and leave my family alone. They didn’t, of course, other members of my family were happy to converse with them as long as they wanted to stay, which ended up being the entire time.

When I looked at my grandpa for the first time that night, my immediate reaction was fear and shock. His eyes were closed and there was a tube stuffed down his throat forcing him to breathe in a way that made his whole body shake. Next to his bed was a large rack that gave home to an innumerable amount of IV bags that were all connected to him at various spots in his body. The nurse tried to explain what they all were, some contained just water to keep him hydrated, most contained medicine to try to fight the many infections destroying his body. However, the IVs and tubes were not what scared me the most. The thing that scared me the most was how dead he already looked. He was unconscious and pale and despite his size he seemed small lying there in the hospital bed. His hands were the only thing that looked the same. They were still as massive as ever and thankfully, nothing was poking into them to distort the way they looked at all.

As I stared at him, I started to let my mind wonder. Would I ever hear his slightly obnoxious laugh or listen to him tell me the stories that I already had memorized? Would he ever bring me in for a giant hug before he left and say “I love you my Queen Victoria,” before moving on to my other siblings? Would I ever watch his big hands shuffle cards or fiddle with themselves as he passed the time? In my heart, I knew that I never would experience any of those things again, but a small part of me desperately wished I could.

After a while, I couldn’t stand to be in the room anymore, so I walked in the hallways and decided to call my sister. She attended college in Indiana, but was on her way up to the hospital, most likely going faster than what is legally allowed in order to get there on time to see our grandpa while he was still alive.

The phone rang a few times and then she picked up. “Hello my Victoria sister,” she said in only a way she could. “Hi,” I replied, my voice already cracking. “What’s wrong?” she inquired, knowing the general idea but wanting to hear the specifics in case there was any way she could help me through it.

“I just don’t know what to do. I feel so lost and overwhelmed with grief. Everyone is crying and I don’t know, I just…” I trailed off, breaking down in tears and not able to speak anymore. “Hey it’s ok to cry. I can be strong for you right now so you don’t have to be afraid to cry,” she said in the most comforting way.

She tried to cheer me up for a little while longer and then we hung up, deciding we could talk more when she got to the hospital. I walked around aimlessly for a while, making my way back in the room for a while to try to comfort my crying mother, but not really knowing what to do, so I just sat and thought. Immediately my thoughts drifted to the overwhelming amount of loss I had already experienced in my life. I had already lost all the other grandparents on both my mom and dad’s side. I had already lost three grandparents, and the fourth was in a state close to death in the hospital bed in front of me.

Suddenly, a piercing siren broke through the sound of everyone’s depression, noting the event of a code blue which meant his body was shutting down and all visitors were ushered out to make room for the doctors who would hastily attempt to regain the mild bit of life they were giving him.

My sister came racing out of the elevator and into the hallway outside my grandpa’s room where we all stood. After her long drive, she came so close to seeing my grandpa alive for the last time, but not close enough.
After a short time, though, the main doctor came out of the room and shut the door, telling us that his attempts had failed and my grandpa was gone.

There is no easy way to break news like that. Little did he know that he had just informed me that I didn’t have grandparents anymore. He didn’t know of the loss I had suffered already in life and that his futile and unsuccessful attempts meant that I was now basically an orphaned grandchild.

I held my sister up as she wept bitterly. She had not quite made it up to our grandpa’s room before he passed away. She was trying so hard to see him while he was still alive, but she ended up being just a few seconds too late, and that’s what broke her heart the most. As she cried into my shoulder, I whispered, “It’s ok to cry, it’s my turn to be strong for you now.”

After a few minutes, we were allowed in the room again to say goodbye to him one last time, and the sight of him now completely lifeless was even worse than before. Even though the nurses had taken the mask of tubes and IVs off his body, the man lying there did not look like my grandpa. There was no life to his face. No happiness. He was pale and frowning slightly with his eyes shut as if knowing death had just taken him into a sleep that he would never wake up from and he didn’t understand why. I couldn’t bring myself to hold onto his cold, giant hands or get very close to him, so I just said my goodbye from a distance, tears brimming my eyes.
I wandered over to my dad and let the wave of emotions I was feeling hit me like a brick wall as I cried into someone’s shoulder for the second time that night.

“I won’t have any grandparents at my graduation,” I cried, “None to wish me off to college with love or watch me at my wedding.” I could feel my dad’s large arms tighten around me as he whispered soft condolences into my hair. He did his best to reassure me, but for that moment, I felt as if there was no hope and that I would quite possibly never be able to move on.