Jay here!

My mom’s dad (I called him Papa) died two weeks after my dad. It was kind of sudden–he was suddenly incapacitated, and then died a few weeks afterwards. My father had just decided to go home on hospice; he said he was tired of fighting, and he was at peace with his decision. My Papa was there for us through my dad’s entire illness and most of his hospice. I hated the hospitals, so my Papa would take me on fun trips while my dad was getting his treatments. On our outings, he would take me to restaurants and buy me anything I wanted. He also took me on shopping sprees and bought any outfit I even looked at, took me to the local museum and so on. With everything going on with my dad’s illness at the time, my Papa just wanted to make me happy.

Despite all the stuff he bought me, I also loved him for who he was. He was a kind man, and he was brilliant. He was an engineer, and he was passionate about science and history. There were only three VHS tapes in his house; Looney Toons, more Looney Toons, and a science documentary. I wish I remembered the name of the documentary, but I thought it was the coolest thing. I especially loved it when they showed the ocean and beaches and talked about the science behind them. I’d sit on the couch with my Papa with Ritz crackers and cheese, and we’d contently just sit together and learn.

I got to spend a lot more time with my Papa during my dad’s illness, and I am grateful I had that time with him. My last memory of him when he was lucid, he took me to an Italian restaurant for my twelfth birthday. My dad was in a hospital bed, flowing in and out of consciousness in our living room, so I was grateful to get out of the house on my birthday. There were constantly people in our house crying over my dad, and it was so crowded that I usually just hid in my room and came out at night after everyone left. His hospice essentially turned me into a nocturnal creature of the night. But for my twelfth birthday, my Papa still made sure I felt like a princess. My friends held a surprise birthday party the night before and gave me a tiara, and my papa let me wear my tiara in the restaurant. We talked about rubbish and laughed over a tray of assorted desserts, and I had no idea that would be my last time with my Papa.

A few days after that, my Papa had a massive stroke. He had an extra blood vessel that connected the two sides of his brain, and it wasn’t an issue it got clogged and left him in a comma.

I saw him once after his stroke. He was lying in a sea of hospital beds down a hallway, a single curtain guarding any privacy he might have left. There were all sorts of wires hooked up to him, just like when my dad was in the hospital. He looked just like my dad for a moment; despite my Papa’s heavy-set nature, he looked small and weak in the hospital bed. He was in a comma, but he was continually snoring. My mom said I could say something to him, but he wouldn’t wake up or react. I remember all the adults pestering the doctors and trying to find more information on what was wrong. It felt exactly like what happened when my dad was in the hospital. The only difference was that this time, my dad was at home, dying, and the one man who always came to get me out of there was the man in the comma.

I didn’t cry—I was too numb for that. What was left of my heart just sank in my chest as I saw my Papa lying there. The doctors said he could wake up or he may not, but there was no way of knowing. They were trying to figure it out. I know now that they probably didn’t know anymore than we did, yet the adults pressed on for answers that weren’t there. Usually, I would have been the optimist. I would have said, “He’ll be fine! It’ll be okay”. The funny thing is, I said that through my dad’s entire cancer journey, but it changed nothing. I said that my dad would be fine, but at the moment he was at home on hospice, waiting for death. If I said my Papa would be fine, would that be the nail in his coffin? Superstitious, I know, but you turn pretty desperate for action when everyone you love is dying around you.

I never saw my Papa after that. The last time I saw him was that time in the Emergency Room as he snored away. I told him I loved him, awkwardly asked him to please wake up, and that was that.

I went home to my dying dad. I wrapped myself in a world of fantasy in a fruitless attempt to hide from it all. I remember sitting on the couch watching the rain run down the glass, knowing the two men in my life were currently dying. It didn’t feel real. It felt like I’d stepped into someone else’s life. No matter how much I pretended it was fine though, this was my life. My two men, my dad and my papa, were dying.

I sat next to my dad, he grabbed my hand, and I watched him inhale for the last time. My mom and I looked at each other and wondered if he really just died. Was this really it? I watched my mom check for breath and search for a heartbeat that would never sound again. I was like a ghost observing the scene around me. This didn’t feel real. How could he possibly be dead? Just like that? But I knew it had happened. I looked over and my mom had silent tears streaming down her face. I observed the hospice nurses, my mind long gone by now, as they confirmed my dad’s death. I watched as they asked my mom if she still wanted to leave. She was in shock, just like me. It felt like we were underwater, drowning in the tears we hadn’t cried yet, every movement a struggle against the weight of our lost future. Still, my mom managed to open the laptop and make the reservation so we could get out of this place. We just needed to get out.

Even after we left, our grief followed us like the moon follows a car at night. No matter where we went or what we did, it was there. I couldn’t believe my dad had just died. Nothing else mattered at the moment other than trying to grapple with this new truth. That is, until days later when my mom brought up my Papa again. I don’t remember the moment she brought him up for the first time, but I remember feeling guilty for forgetting he was in a coma. Sure, my dad had just died, but that didn’t give me the right to forget my Papa.

I’ll always remember my mom’s reaction. Her husband, her forever love, had just died before her eyes, and now she was reminded that her father was also in a comma. She was confused and crying. Was she supposed to stay in the hotel near her husband’s body, or should she go see her dad? Would seeing her dad mean anything, since he was in a comma? Was going to see her dad worth dealing with her abusive mother, especially in this fragile state of grief?

My mom physically embodied her indecision. She forcefully grabbed her keys and marched towards the door saying we were going to see my Papa. I thought that if that’s what she wanted, then that’s what we would do. But then she froze at the door and said she didn’t want to go. She walked back towards the bed and sat down, and I told her we didn’t have to go if she wasn’t ready. This is when she started to cry, and said she didn’t know what she wanted to do. I was starting to think we shouldn’t go see my Papa. If it was this much of struggle to decide, then maybe it was a sign we shouldn’t go. Nevertheless, I held her hand and told her we could do whatever she wanted to do. Ultimately, it was her decision. She surged towards the door again, certain she wanted to see her father before he died… and she crumbled to the ground. I jumped up, ran to her, and wrapped my arms around her. At this point, I couldn’t take it anymore. I wanted her to do what she needed to do, but I could tell she was not ready to watch someone else die. I wasn’t even ready to watch someone else die. The wound from my dad was still fresh for both of us; she didn’t need to watch Papa die too. I sat in front of her and looked into her tearful green eyes. “Mom,” I said, “take it from me. You don’t want to watch your dad die”. And with that, she hugged me tightly and sobbed. I just held her, still too broken to cry.

On December 29, 2014, my Papa died fourteen days after my father.

To this day, I don’t think I’ve properly grieved the loss of my Papa. He helped me through my dad’s cancer and he was supposed to help us through my dad’s death, not make us grieve for him as well. I was twelve; I didn’t know how I was supposed to go about grieving the loss of my father. How was I supposed to grieve my dad and my papa at the same time? The short answer: I didn’t.

It’s almost six years after my Papa’s death, and I’m just starting to grieve for him. I feel bad about it since he was such an amazing man and deserves better. I pushed him out of my brain so I wouldn’t think about him. You can’t grieve someone you don’t think about. It’s only now that I’ve learned to live with the loss of my father that I have started to think about and miss my Papa.

We had a special hug we would do. I’d wrap my arms around his Santa-size-belly and then jump forward so I could try to wrap my arms all the way around him. I can still hear his raspy “ahh” that he would do every time, just to make me laugh. I miss his face too. He had a huge purple birthmark that covered half of his face. Only after his death did I learn he used to get bullied for it, but I thought his birthmark was cool—it was a part of my Papa. How often do you meet someone with a purple face?! I miss his purple face and eyes, green like the morning light shining through a bright green leaf. He also had huge, dorky glasses the side of a fist. I miss his chortle of a laugh too.

It is only now that I’ve finally processed my dad’s death and accepted it happened that I have started to grieve for my Papa. I think the thing that makes me miss him the most is my newfound love for rocks. You see, when I was in school, I used to want to be a chemist. But instead of teaching what I wanted to learn, they shoved this earth science curriculum down my throat repeatedly. By the time I reached high school, I didn’t care about science at all anymore.

But my Papa still took me to the museum, and we had fun there. I still watched that science documentary with him too. It wasn’t until my freshman year of high school that I fell in love with geology. I expected my earth science class to be the same boring nonsense they’d taught me since elementary about how things grow and the water cycle. But in this class, she taught us about how the middle of the earth is made of melted, vibrating magma, and how that magma resurfaces into new rocks. I learned about seafloor spreading, Pangea, and how we can classify rocks to know their journey to their present state. I was hooked, and I was excited about science again.

The sad part is, my Papa isn’t here to see it. He loved geology and now that we could have fascinating conversations about it, he’s dead.

I tried not to miss him. He was in his seventies and overweight, of course he was going to die at some point. I think this was just my excuse to put off grieving my Papa until I learned to grapple with my dead dad. Now though, my grief for my Papa has finally surfaced. As I prepare to go to college, I’m thinking about majoring in geology and going into the profession of Marine Geology. I know that my Papa would have been ecstatic!

His love for science lived on only in memory until my mom started to clean out his stuff. She cleans when she’s stressed, so with the pandemic going on, she cleaned out many things in our home. However, when going through my Papa’s stuff, she found a gem: his old transcripts and school paperwork. According to his college transcripts, before he went into engineering, he was majoring in geology! This hit really close to my heart. He never got to finish his coursework for geology; he dropped out before he could finish. It made me only more excited to go get my geology degree.

I can finally admit that I really miss him. I think about him frequently now and how proud and happy he would be, and the enthusiastic conversations we would have. He used to have a huge rock collection that he tried to show me once, but that was before I cared about rocks. Now I would love nothing more than to go through the different sedimentary, igneous, and metamorphic rock samples with my Papa.

I’ll go through them now alone now, hoping his spirit is smiling next to me. I’ll always miss him now, and live each day to make him proud.  

Aloha and gratitude,

Jay and Shell