Grandfather sits in a chair at the hospital every other Monday
as doctors pump chemo into him for five hours.
When it is over, they let him go home, chemicals
still seeping into his frail body,
and at midnight he wakes up and throws up all over the floor.
Still, doctors say he is getting better,
that each round of chemotherapy has only helped
him grow stronger.
But how can that be true when he can't walk the way he used to,
can’t breathe the way he used to,
can’t greet me when I step off the plane and into Fort Meyers every April,
wrapping his arms around my shoulders,
rocking me the way he used to?

I watch as silver strands of hair hit the floor.

As doctors in their suits and ties sit across the long wooden desk,
staring with dry eyes into our wet ones,
they tell us they are doing everything in their power to
keep his heart beating for as long as possible,
but they really are thinking of all the money they would make,
the cars and houses they would buy and the vacations they would go on.
Not saving my grandfather.

Another strand falls to the floor.

In the doctor’s goal to extend his life they also
extend the pay check they receive after
each appointment, each treatment, and each headshake
they give my grandmother when
she asks “Is everything going to be okay?”
To them, money is as rare as the abdominal cancer he has been diagnosed with.

They debate how to spend their earnings
while dusting off college degrees hanging on their walls,
and strands of hair still silently hit the floor.

The doctors forgot that
their decisions impact a life that still
has so much more to give to the world.
And don’t tell me that everybody has to die.
I know that.
I know that.
He just wasn’t supposed to go this early.

The truth is I’ve never been that close with my grandfather
but right now I just wish I could be with him on those Mondays,
to sit and hold his hand and do everything and anything,
except watch him die.

I want to believe the doctors when they say his life is returning to him,
but nothing about him is the same anymore.
Every time I see him, I cannot determine the color of his eyes.
His voice sounds like it’s been auto tuned and his clothes are wrinkled
because he can’t sit up straight anymore.
His footsteps match with the sound of his assisting cane,
while phone conversations with him cannot be held without my mother crying
over the dinner she is making in the background, and
I am counting down the days until Christmas.
He will surely not last until then.

To think, as we prepare for the death of my grandfather,
The rest of the world prepares for the birth of Christ, our savior.