When it comes to my own death, I have no fear. I’m unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you view it) very familiar with death. I have experienced what it’s like to die. I have had more than my fair share of near-death experiences. I am okay with my own death, whether it means I have a soul that will continue to live on long after my body dies, or death is just eternal, dreamless sleep. 

However, when it comes to the death of others, I can’t even begin to explain how awful it feels to even think about the fact that many of my close friends and family will one day pass on before I will. Because of my medical history, I never really thought I had to consider the fact that loved ones would pass away before me. But, now, I am being forced to face that, and have faced that not too far in the past, and it is hitting me full-force. I’m not quite sure how to even begin to cope. 

When I was ten or eleven years old, my paternal great-grandpa came to live with my grandparents for the remainder of his life. He was around ninety-one when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and by then it was already quite profound. He used to play all sorts of musical instruments from the piano, to the guitar, the harmonica, the accordion, and more. He also sang very well. I remember listening to recordings of him singing his favorite hymns and polkas in German. When Alzheimer’s took hold of him (along with arthritis), he lost the ability to play any of the instruments. He could still hum and sing quietly, but within a few months of his diagnosis, he stopped playing music altogether. 

The next thing to go was his ability to play cards. It wasn’t just the arthritis that made cards hard for him. As his memory faded, so did his grasp on the rules and tricks of the games he’d been playing his entire life. I remember playing cards with him over the course of several months, and he went from having no trouble remembering the rules of the games and the cards he had, to barely even knowing what he was doing with a deck of cards laid out in front of him in the first place. The last time he tried to play cards with us, he held up his hand with the cards, looked up at us with a blank stare, looked back down at the cards, then carefully laid them face-down on the table and walked away, his shoulders slouched over in defeat. 

Around that same time, he stopped talking or even interacting with the world around him. He’d just stare blankly into space, never interacting with anyone at the nursing home, too arthritic to really walk anywhere, unwilling to sit in a wheelchair. The only time he ever showed any lucidity was when my grandpa was with him. My great-grandpa would hold my grandpa’s hands and tell him with a raspy, whisper, “I love you.”, before his lucidity vanished and he was back to staring blankly into space again, not acknowledging the world around him at all.

It was hard for everyone to witness. Though, I was too young and too shy to really understand the full-extent of what was happening before our very eyes. I never got to know my great-grandpa all that well. And, I think I was kind of afraid of him when he came to live with my grandparents towards the very end of his life. 

I was there when he passed away. During the final week of his life, my grandparents moved my great-grandpa to a hospice care home nearby their house, where he could pass away peacefully and comfortably in a home setting. I remember being in the living room of that hospice home, watching some animal documentary on TV, while my mom and a couple of nurses were in his room talking to him. 

At some point that evening, the feeling in the house changed in an inexplicable way, as though a sudden warm draft had come through the windows and enveloped the whole house (even though it was late November). Curious, I turned the TV volume down and strained my ears to hear what was going on in my great-grandpa’s room (I was too scared to leave the living room to go see what was up). I remember hearing a nurse reading my great-grandpa’s favorite bible passage, Sermon on the Mount. Another nurse had a recording of a choir singing “Amazing Grace” playing on a laptop near his bed. And, my mom was sniffling, obviously in tears. 

Within five minutes, the heart monitor hooked up to my great-grandpa flatlined, and the women in the room joined hands to say a goodbye prayer. I don’t remember anything else from that night, other than the fear I felt of it all. For the first time in my life, the finality of death hit me hard. Sure, I’d always known intellectually about death (especially considering the fact I grew up knowing I’d probably die very young). But, emotionally, it never hit me till that fateful night when my great-grandpa died at the age of ninety-three; two weeks after his birthday. It terrified me, to say the least. 

Less than a week later was the funeral. I remember standing by my great-grandpa’s casket, looking down at his lifeless body. It was scary to me just how still and silent he was. Not two weeks before, I’d seen him as a living, breathing, eating man, still remembering to pray before every meal, ending his prayer with a deep, raspy, “Ah-men”. I remember joining hands with him for that prayer, and feeling the warmth and strength those hands still possessed. But, lying still and silent in that casket, those hands were no longer warm or strong.