The Great Lion is Dead

My grandpa died on Monday, February 8th, 2010 in Mercy Hospital.

When Conner ran into the lobby to wake me, he told me that his breathing had dropped to zero, so I needed to hurry. I did, and I ran down to the ICU room.

There, Ronnie and Sarah sat beside my motionless grandfather. His heart monitor was still off the charts, though, but his breathing rate had, indeed, fallen to zero.

I sat in the chair beside him. I watched him.

The nurse ran in and switched the heart monitor to the 'private' setting, which means we don't see anything happening internally. Then she ran out.

I still watched him.

And I watched as he morphed into a lifeless, inhuman form.

The peaceful lapse into unconsciousness you see in the movies is a lighthearted, playful version of death. That's the stupidest thought, but it's what I was thinking.

The being that used to be my grandfather, my warm, honest, sturdy, musky-scented grandfather transformed into something alien and wrong before my eyes.

It was alien. It was inhuman. It was not supposed to be.

I watched him briefly resemble my peacefully sleeping grandfather.

And then I watched him melt into a soulless monster, an inanimate creature that wasn't supposed to exist.

He looked empty. Like a coffee cup filled with everything that mattered had suddenly been dumped out into a hellish abyss and all you wanted to do was rescue it. And all that's left is the cup. The empty, ugly cup.

His son entered the room. His son tried to close the empty vessel's mouth. It didn't work. His son pushed the lifeless alien onto its side, and I watched as this thing that mildly resembled my grandfather sank like a ragdoll under his son's touch.

Sarah whimpered and turned my face away. I squeezed eyes shut, but it's burned into my head.

I told her I needed to leave. She came with me and had her arms around me for about the next hour. She saw it too. She saw the monstrous, empty shell. She and I, and also Ronnie, will never speak of this experience, but we will always have the connection. We saw it happen.

Conner saw it too, but I think he saw it a different way. He doesn't understand how disturbed we are.

I'm now taking a healthy dose of Zoloft every day, so it's easier to push aside. I do have panic attacks every morning before school. But that's what the Zoloft is for, I suppose.

I want to melt into a puddle of water and curl up on the ground, just so I can sleep forever.