“From up here the city lights burn, like a thousand miles of fire, and we’re here to sing this anthem, of our dying day.”—Story of the Year

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth, 

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 
Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds - 
and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of - 
wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence. 
Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along 
and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

"Up, up the long delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace,
where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand and touched the face of God."

“From up here the city lights burn, like a thousand miles of fire, and we’re here to sing this anthem, of our dying day.”—Story of the Year

Happy 86th birthday, Grandpa.

Most of the lights on the monitors have been switched off, and beeps from the machines are fewer and fewer. The last several days blur into one dark section of time. I am holding tightly to Grandpa’s right hand. I am holding it as he slips quietly from the surly bonds of earth. It is the hardest thing I have ever had to do, and also the most important. 

I do not know how many days we have been here, in this Arizona hospital. There were so few pieces to this unplanned trip—bags packed quickly and a rushed drive to the airport after a short phone call. The words “heart-attack” and “unresponsive”. And then Adam and I were on a plane in the dead of winter, hoping that we could make it in time and also knowing that time was already gone.

Just a couple years earlier I had told Grandpa I would need him to walk me down the aisle if someone ever agreed to marry me. He responded jokingly, “no more weddings,” but I knew there was no one else I wanted by my side if that day ever came. And I knew he would do this for me no matter how much he was tired of going to weddings. 

As I sit by his side, I recall how we had just hugged and said goodbye only a couple of weeks before, as Grandpa and Lana prepared for a trip to warmer weather with friends. We had shared a meal and I remember my hug was brief, and not as tight as it should have been. Thinking they would be back soon, I rushed through my goodbyes, not knowing that was the last embrace we would share together. 

I have been holding Grandpa’s hand for hours now. I don’t know how many, but I know this is not abnormal. I have had the last few days to painstakingly research what to expect in these types of medical situations, and I know this process of moving from this world to the next will take time. As a family, we have all agreed that Grandpa is no longer here with us and that these machines are the last way he would want to endure life. Fortunately, Grandpa’s sense of humor and directness had allowed for us to have this actual conversation many times before, and his wishes were crystal clear. 

As we congregated in his room, I felt as though my chest was ripping open and that I was being consumed with pain I couldn’t even begin to bear. We sat by his side—cousins, aunts, daughters, friends—at times trying to share stories and at times crying uncontrollably and other times all of us just quiet. I do not suppose the completeness of this loss has even fully occurred to me. I am simply distraught, unable to focus on anything but this sense of intense emptiness and pain. I am angry, I am bargaining, and I am unable to understand how someone so young at heart could be taken away so unexpectedly. My head is swimming as I stand beside the bed half aware of this incomprehensible reality, and half consumed in memories. 

Death is a strange experience. Sometimes expected, sometimes not. Sometimes quick and other times slow. I have never experienced it within my family until now. It is of nearly no comfort to me to be here, but rather something I feel is somewhat of a last duty, something I have to do, to stand by him through this last part. This final flight into the footless halls of air. I need to be here for him and for me. I could not have been anywhere else, but it is the most intense pain I have experienced. All at once I want to run out of the room screaming and also want to clamp onto his hand forever and make him stay with me. 

When the room is finally still and silent, and the machines are off, and Grandpa is gone, there is a final surge of tears. And then a hollowness. I am exhausted and empty. Adam and I drive slowly away from the hospital. He was beside me throughout this nightmare, even sleeping in the waiting room with me the first night because I wanted to be there in case there were any miraculous changes. We drive silently in the dark of the night, cloaked in our own individual grief. Adam lost his own grandfather less than two short months ago. I remember wondering how he survived it. Now our grief is raw all over again. 

Suddenly, all of the things I will not get to do with Grandpa burst out of me. I can't get the words out quickly enough to explain all that is now missing. I angrily account for all of things that have been stolen from me. I realize that we will not visit the shooting range in the cool summer mornings. We will not sit on the porch listening to afternoon rain. He will not be home when I come for dinner. And he will not walk me down the aisle for my wedding.  

Adam is quiet for a moment and then turns to me. He softly explains that on one morning he went to Grandpa’s room alone to talk to him. Adam sat beside his hospital bed and asked him if he could marry me, asked for his permission. In all the chaos of these last few days, he had done a most meaningful task. Adam had known how important it was to me, to ask this man—who was to walk me down the aisle—if he could be the one waiting at the end. 

Tears streamed down my cheeks as Adam recounted what he had done, and I felt a brief moment of peace and closure. The finality of leaving the hospital, and everything it meant, softened just a little from such an act of love and respect.

At our wedding, my husband and I chose a song for our first dance filled with bittersweet words that we felt captured so much of our albeit short journey together. The song included the lyrics, “visit grandpa every chance that you can, it won’t be wasted time.” I never, ever viewed time with my grandparents as wasted time. But that time ran out so much sooner than I ever dreamed. He didn't walk me down the aisle that day, but he was with me. I carried his bible wreathed in flowers and adorned my dress and bouquet wrap with his air guard pins. 

My memories live now in little scraps of paper with cartoons drawn and notes scrawled in Grandpa’s handwriting, in cards and newspaper articles he’s sent to me, and in photographs where he will be smiling forever, target shooting, drinking milkshakes, and telling jokes. I see his face and hear his voice constantly. It will be years before I stop picking up the phone to call or text. I will never stop looking for him on the porch when I drive up to the house. I will never stop grieving for him. The void doesn’t get smaller, we just find ways to walk around the edges of it.