Floating, drifting in silence. Despair and sadness are feelings that don’t come, feelings I didn’t expect to come. My body feels weightless, as though I’m floating on my back, down a slow, calm river. Cool water carries me and my soul along a field of memories that flash through the sky. Suddenly, I feel like I’m going over a waterfall, freefalling to the unknown. Then there’s darkness; I’m back. Barely getting to observe my surroundings, my eyes move to see her. She is sitting in the vintage chair, still as stone, only her hands move as she wrings them together like she is digging for the bones inside them. The rest of her body is deathly still, her tangled hair in knots on her shoulders.  I wish I could hold her hands still and hug her warmly in my arms, explain to her how close I truly was. To keep my granddaughter’s empty eyes from staring at the bed I once slept on.  

Why did this happen? What am I supposed to do now? My hands burn like they were stuck in the embers of a dying fire. Even though it hurts, I can’t stop wringing them together. All I can do is stare blankly at the bed that once held so much warmth and comfort it wrapped me in happiness. Now it looks cold. Like the heat of the desert compared to the wintery mass of the Arctic. The moment I walk into the room, I want to sit in the bed and give it the warmth it so desperately needs, but I don’t have any left to give. Everything is empty. This house once held so much laughter, her laughter is silent, so silent that I can hear the beating of our hearts, but there is one less heart beating now. Focusing my eyes in front of me again, I watch the bed, observing the pure white sheets with the rainbow quilt we grandkids decorated. Its colorful cloth was made gorgeous with the tiny addition of our innocent hands. The sheets lay sprawled with the pillow tossed at an unnatural angle. Everyone was in such a rush, they didn’t even notice the mess they left.  

Why was I so useless? I just stood there and let them take her away, and she isn’t ever coming back. Maybe I should fix it? Then I would have to touch the bed and feel the cold, lifeless sheets under my fingers. I’d be able to smell her scent, flowers on a clean summer day where the whistling wind blows a refreshing breeze. But I can’t touch her bed or smell her scent because I will lose myself. Breathing around it holds this deadly fear, festering deep inside me locked away in a box, never to be opened. The bed mocks me, using itself as a reminder of the person I will never see sleep in it again. I remember when only a week ago, she sat me in the vintage chair beside her bed and said her “final goodbyes,” private goodbyes to everyone she loved. There she sat, staring at me from her bed with her intoxicating smile. “Hello, precious.” The nickname settled my uneasiness, “Hi Nana.” 

We sat in peace, neither of us wanting to speak of what was to come. I could see in her eyes that she knew she was dying, but I could also see that she wasn’t scared. How could someone be so unfazed by the thought of death? She’s leaving so much behind like her family, this life she built for herself, and me; she’ll be leaving me. I’ll be alone without an escape. Death feels like a box and she is willingly laying in it. She accepts her fate, but I will never. She finishes her goodbye, but all I could do was gaze at her face, a face that knows pain and suffering, suffering that I will never understand.  

“I love you my precious E, so much more than you will ever know.”  

“I love you too.” The smile she gave me made me forget that she would be gone soon, and I would never see her smile again. 

I only flash back to reality for a moment before I’m pulled back into my memories, but to one that only happened an hour ago. I watched the EMTs take her away in the ambulance, my mother locked eyes with my terrified ones. She said, “You will have to stay here if anything happens at the hospital we will come back and get you guys.” Sadly, I watched her retreating figure. I numbly slide down the wall and waited, watching the door. When it finally opened again, I was greeted by a bunch of voiceless adults. My mom looked at me with sympathetic and pained eyes, “She’s gone.” At 3:46 AM on the 29th of May, I lost a part of my family.  

I feel a single tear slide down my cheek, as it fell it leaves a cool, wet trail down my face. Wiping the tear from my face, I look up again to be greeted by my Nana, there she sat right on the bed staring back at me. But as I look again, she has disappeared. In this still house, there is the silent cry of grandchildren, a grief-stricken family, and the sound of not enough heartbeats.