So This is What it Feels Like to cry

I didn’t know if it was a Monday, or a Tuesday. A Sunday or a Friday. I can’t recall if it was raining or if the sun broke through the clouds. Or if it was morning or night. But there is a day that I remember too clearly. Like a knife, it shreds away at my thoughts, plaguing me in all its iniquity. That one day where every emotion was felt, whether it was a prickle or a stab. Some strong, some light and fleeting. But they were there, scraping at my goosebump coated skin, watching me with a menacing hunger a thousand years old.

It was the first day of summer just before eighth grade. I knew exactly what I would do for the rest of that day: take a shower, eat a snack, drink some juice, and watch Netflix. The perfect way to start the break. I heard a voice call me down the steps. I practically fell down the stairs to my Mom. I stood in the shadow of the open window, the afternoon sun shimmering on my cheeks,
“Yes?” I smiled, relaxing in the warmth of the sun. But something was wrong. My Mom’s eyes were weary and her brow furrowed. She spoke slowly.
“Do you want to go visit your Grandpa in the hospital?” I hesitated. I didn’t. I didn’t want to see his crippled face amongst the sea of crippled faces. I didn’t want to hear him ask who I was. I didn’t want to feel like a stranger like the last time we went to visit him. But I didn’t want to be rude. I reluctantly nodded my head. Seeing that I didn’t want to go, my Mom stepped closer and in a whispered softly,
“This might be.” Her wrinkles seemed to deepen almost painfully as the truth came out, “the last time you can see him.” My breath seemed to go cold, like I breathed over dry ice. Might be the last time? I knew exactly what that meant. My Grandpa might die tonight. A relative that was once here, wouldn’t be here anymore.
I shoved a few distractions in a bag and hurried outside with my mother and sister. I knew it would be hard for my dad, who was waiting in the car outside. It would be hard watching his own father loosen up as his last breath shuddered out in a weak wisp. To watch his own father go cold. I’d never really thought deeply about death. It was just a moment when someone closed their eyes and stopped breathing. There wasn’t anything to worry about, all the people around me seemed like they would live forever. But now that one of those people might slip away,I realized what death really was. It was a person, loved or loathed, engulfed completely by darkness. Then death disappears, it’s trip so unbelievably quick that it tears a scar in all the people around them. It vanishes with another soul in it’s jaws, gone forever.

The car jerked down the hill. I watched leaves trip and skid on the concrete and flowers shed their petals in a gush of wind. A large grey building came into view, and the four of us stepped out, shoes grating against the gravel to the entrance. The cigarette smoke filled air skated around us as the A.C. slammed across our faces.
My dad and his brothers spoke briefly but other than that, we all drowned in the silence of an elevator’s clank. We stepped through the sliding doors and the brittle family shuffled to the emergency room. Whenever we visited our Grandpa, we would normally go to the patient’s room, but I was not surprised when we made a sudden turn to the emergency room. According to my Mom, my Grandpa’s condition had gone from terrible to critical.

We put on cold, hard slippers that hurt my feet, and trudged into the room. The air was depressed, like the ceiling was constantly getting lower and lower. An old woman was shouting in her bed, ranting. Scary, like she couldn’t accept the fact that she was in this breeding ground for death. To her, she was somewhere far away from the hospital. Somewhere in her past. I turned away from her and we all crowded around Grandpa’s bed. A silent nightmare lay before us. The worst kind of nightmare.

A mask filled with condensation was over his mouth, muffling raspy breaths. I hated the sound of the heart monitor going “Beep. Beep.” in our ears. Like something was counting down the seconds from now until the moment he would leave us. Forty two, forty one, forty. My dad stood next to me, somehow able to watch this horrible scene, to see the tubes going in and out, curving around his own father’s body. To see the yellowish liquid drip and flood through his veins. My Dad’s hands gripped together, trying hard to hold back the tears.I watched in horror, ‘So this is what it’s like. To watch someone die.’ I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the old man’s half opened eyes and limp arms.
I tried so hard to cry. I tried harder than I’ve ever tried before. I couldn’t. Grandma came to his side, and I knew it would be even harder for her to watch her husband go. Soon my Grandma would be all alone, sitting in a tiny apartment weeping over a picture, or maybe she would be calm and reserved, saving tears only for the night, when they would be hidden from the world. I wondered how she would deal with the pain. Loneliness. The worst kind of pain. I looked over at my sister, and my Mom, finally able to rip my eyes away from my Grandpa. My sister looked at his face with concern. A little too late for that. My Mom’s eyes were red as she gripped the bed rail and watched him. All of my aunts were crying, all of my cousins were solemnly standing around him like a wall of darkness. My uncles had an almost angry look on their faces, like they couldn’t forgive their father for leaving them. I have to cry too, I thought. I wasn’t connected to my Grandpa like they were. So unfair.

It was starting to feel a tiny bit chilly, adding to the sunken atmosphere. I caught a cold from standing under the AC too long. I blew my nose, and it looked like I was crying, but I knew I wasn’t. Amidst the sniffles, I realized why I didn’t feel grief. I don’t know this man at all. I didn’t know what foods he liked, I didn’t know the places he had been. I didn’t know what job he had. I didn’t know how old he was. A stranger. We’re strangers. The wall between us was crammed with lead and knives. We were more distant than my uncles, aunts and cousins. My eyes were glued on his face. On his weak figure. His sunken skin and dry wrinkles. He looked like a skeleton already. I looked back at the heart monitor, playing innocence above his bed. The numbers on the screen went up and down and up and down and up and down. And down. And down. And down… I guess I couldn’t blame him for not knowing my name, when I didn’t even know his.
I lowered my head as I remembered a time, when the thin string between my Grandpa and I was shown to me in truth…
My dad, brother, sister, and I traipsed through parks, spotting the rare tandem bicycle and a lifetime supply of tiny white dogs. At some point, we visited our Grandparents. My Grandma was always smiling, living the carefree life that every old soul should deserve. My Grandpa was healthy, farming and eating a nicely sized set of homegrown vegetables every day. They lived in the mountains with the fresh air and bark of dogs down the hill. That night when we arrived there, I wasn’t exactly excited to see them, but once we met and spoke a bit, it was a pleasant experience. Even though we were going to leave the next day, the atmosphere showed no worry or rush. The scenery like heaven, the sun slowly bubbling into the moon, and the sky glittering with stars. So clear in the sweet air. Like golden jewels against the dark cave wall. A warm yellow light caressed our faces as dinner was set out before us. Grandpa’s spiciest peppers were laid out in the middle. My brother tried a bite and started crying! That night we laughed and talked and finally, turned off the lights and sighed against the cool moon’s shadow. Our hearts filled with satisfaction.

The next day, my brother, Dad, sister, and I set out to see more of Korea. In the car, my Dad started talking about our Grandpa. About how he was when he was young. My dad looked so happy, reciting all the stories his dad told him. My dad rarely talked about Grandpa.

When you ask someone about their grandparents, they usually have something amazing to say. Maybe their Grandpa was in the war, and survived, or maybe they knew famous athletes of their age. But I never had anything to say about my Grandfather. Hearing all these fresh stories coming out of an ancient box, was like opening a book that I should have read already, but hadn’t had the slightest glimpse of. I knew that it was too late to remember every chapter, or be able to recite important words, but at least I was aware of how little I knew about my Grandpa. My Mom and Dad never tried to make my sister and I get to know Grandpa and Grandma. To be honest, at the time, I didn’t want to know them that much. There was no drive in interest about their lives, or what relationship they had with the more distant part of our family. For most of my life, I’d lived in America, across the sea from our Grandparents. There wasn’t really a reason to know them if I probably wasn’t ever going to even see them. I guess my parents had similar thoughts. I know I couldn’t do anything to change the past, but I know that I still regret not asking.
My mind melted back to the hospital, an aching void in my stomach.The room seemed to get smaller. The dark spots lining the floor and the shadows, buzzing in the corners, hungry. The tiny shadows seemed to grow in my sight, splotching the sheets and faces. I think, at that moment. None of us could believe it. And in that single moment, we were all in the same room, seeing the same heart crippling scene. For a moment, we were the same. For a tiny moment, our energy seemed to ache together, an identical thorn twisting in our sides. That thorn, was one of the cruelest thorns that I’ve ever happened upon.

Everyone else who was weeping over him, felt real pain. Their hearts weren’t shattering, they were slowly freezing. Getting as cold as my Grandpa. The room seemed to be as icy as an assassin’s stare, for my aunts, uncles, and cousins it must have been torture. Watching a slow, cruel death in a white hospital, whose walls were crimson with death, like red wine splattering across the wallpaper. All this red wine splattering on my Grandpa. I remember hearing that my Grandpa wasn’t happy in the hospital. Nobody wants to die in a jail like place, with the stinging scent of the sick. I stared at his face, his deep wrinkles and dull squint. My Grandpa looked like he was falling asleep. His body looked so weak, like it would shatter in one touch. I hated seeing him like this. All vulnerable, like his spirit had been completely destroyed. My Grandpa had forgotten my name. He hadn’t forgotten just my name. He’d forgotten me. I don’t remember how it sounded when he first learned it. The old voice saying, “Michelle! Michelle!” I felt so hollow. Why couldn’t I feel that same pain? Why couldn’t I make salty tears well up? And I thought, So. This is what it feels like, to be forgotten.

I didn’t watch him pass away. I didn’t see him off. I still feel regret and think dirt caked thoughts. Sometimes I wish it was me on that bed. I wish I had been the one cast off without guilt or disgust at my own self. I wish it had been me hearing false, stranger tears. But nothing can change that day.
The car still jostled down the road, no matter how smooth the road was...
And the soul still flew above, no matter how many stranger tears were wept for it.