Tonight my grandfather died.

I was going to write about what happened yesterday in NYC. About how my interview went, how I rambled on about the superiority of bikes compared to cars, and got a strange look from my interviewer. How I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge way above the water and cars and saw Ellis Island and the Statute of Liberty. Or stopping in Chinatown for lunch and sitting with a bunch of old Chinese ladies and trying to understand what they were saying while I ate my roast pork lo mein.

Right now, these events seem a lifetime away. In the blink of an eye, things change. I knew he was going to die. It was only a matter of time. This was his third major stroke in an exactly two year period. However, when it happens, one is in a state of disbelief.

I knew when I picked up the phone and saw who was on the caller ID, I knew! what the message was going to be. I could see my mom's eyes water up as I passed the phone to her. It was and still is heartbreaking to watch in my mind's eye. Even though we all hated the man, for what he did to my mother, ruining her life, crushing every moment of happiness that she had the right to experience, the animosity he felt to her joy, we felt towards him. However, we couldn't let him die alone, no matter our opinions of the man. Blood is strange that way. It creates responsibilities and obligations that nothing else can. And to break these bonds takes something so much more extreme.

Walking into the old folk's home, Pinerest, I got shivers. Who names a retirement home, PINEREST??? Coffins are made of pine wood. That's the only type of rest that a pine tree gives. It seems that once that you are a resident of Pinerest Assisted Living, you are there until the grave. Morbid, huh?

Death smells like shit. I don't know if this is because of the body loosing bowel control and the moment of death or the fact that a caretaker was cleaning out his neighbor's ostomy bag, but it reeked. Walking pass the neighbors partition, one could see that something, perhaps a soul, used to reside in the body. There is a definite difference between one who is alive and one who is not. It may be in the way the body lies unnaturally, but what stood out most were the eyes. They had left his eyes wide open in a blank stare. To me, this is the most disrespectful thing one could do to a family. Call them up, race them down to the home, and then leave the body in the exact state that it died in. Left side of the face drooping, mouth gaping open, eyes slowly loosing moisture from the lack of blinking. I wanted to scream the injustice of it all, the unnatural feeling death brings into the room, make a uncomfortable subject easier to deal with, when I realized that this is what my mother needed. She needed to see her father in his exact state of death, in order to move on, and pass by the things that occurred in her youth. Only in this way could (I hate this word) closure occur.

I learned a lot in those few hours at the nursing home. People say that life is short. It is and it isn't. He lived to be over 90 years old, but spent the last two in a home. Life is precious. We only have a certain about of time on this world and it is up to us to make the most of that time. There is no room for regrets or wishful thinking. Stay in touch with people who made a difference in your life, even if you have not spoken to them in a while. It's never too late to say hello again to an old friend. I'm glad I did not wait to long to do that.......I'm exhausted now, it's been an emotionally and physically trying day. Plus the scotch is starting to wear off and I just want to close my eyes.