Living after Loss

I watched the colors of a bright Saturday afternoon fly by me through the mesh window of my nylon mobile enclosure. Life seemed easy then. Nothing really to think about except the twelve thousand shades of green in a single patch of grass. It wasn't just me in the little nylon box. Dougie was in there too, watching the colors just as I did. We were attached to a bicycle. Riding fast past houses, everything out side of the small nylon bubble was just a blur of color.
Life seemed brighter then. Walks seemed more like adventures. Everyday I can remember taking walks with him. Always energetic journeys through unknown regions of our imagination. We walked the same streets, my hand always glued to his. We'd always be out for what seemed like hours. The sun always shined on those days.
"Nothing short of imaginative" is something I often believed when I was with him. Everything was not as it seemed. Everyday objects became great tools of sparking the imagination. His wine press became so much more than a mere household trinket. It's wooden dowel of a handle had a hole drilled through it. It was now a pirate's telescope within the shaded wooded patio that became the pirate's ship. The pond he took care of was more than a hobby of his. It became the feature of an imperial emperor's garden in Hong Kong. His garage became the sight of great mechanical creations. He was always the one who inspired my creatively explosive imagination.
  There was never really any difference between work and play with him. He always made jobs seem like fun; visiting with tenants, basic maintenance work, and riding around in his little tractor through the apartments was even an adventure. With him, learning was not a tedious task forced upon you for hours each day. He was so easy to learn from.
Koi were always his favorite, they soon became mine too. We would sit by his fish pond for hours watching them swim back and forth. He had so many of them. All different colors and patterns. He always told me that the yellow ones were especially important. We always sat there and fed them. I can still see each one bobbing up its head to snag a pellet. They were almost quicker than our ability to let the food out of our hands.
We all called him Poppy, and he was my grandfather. He taught me  most of what I know about life. He always reminded me to find the beauty in everything, because nothing was ever what it seemed. Every little thing in life had something amazing inside, and he taught me to find that little bit of amazing. He made life easy, he was never one to complicate someone's thinking. He was always the one who lit the fuse in his grandchildren's creativity.
The day I was told he had prostate cancer, I was so taken by surprise that I completely shut it out and couldn't take it as reality. It was nearly 3 years ago now. There was no way something like that was going to take him away. I was naïve enough to not see it until the bitter end. I refuse to see him the way everyone else did.
He soon began to withdraw from everyone, with long periods of introspection and bouts of depression. We realized afterwards that he had been hiding his pain from us. In his way he was trying to protect his family. That was always an obvious trait of his, he was always the one who worried about everyone else. He never wanted us to worry about him.
His withdrawal, at the time, was confusing to me. Where had my confidant gone? This confounding behavior, we later learned, is a normal reaction to such a devastating diagnosis. It was a way for him to face his own mortality.
When I was told that his cancer was terminal I was finishing up sophomore year. It was around May or June. The news didn't really phase me. We all knew that prostate cancer is a tough cancer to beat, and if it went to his bones it was all over, but we thought that he was going to brush it off like it was nothing (or at least I did). The months following the grim diagnosis were definitely the hardest. I watched him take a turn for the worst, I watched him suffer. It became clear that the cancer was too strong a foe.
I was asked to stay with Poppy while my grandmother went grocery shopping with my mother. She hated leaving him alone for too long. I walked into the living room just as they left. I sat down on the chair that was next to where he was laying on the couch. If it wasn't obvious before, it was obvious now that the cancer was taking a toll on him. He looked nothing like he did only months before. I greeted him just as I normally did, expecting that he'd return the greeting. My name seemed to escape from his mind. He couldn't figure it out. I sat there for what seemed like hours, my head completely congested with tearful sighs that couldn't be let out. I was ready to explode. I was told not to cry in front of him, he wasn't quite ready to accept the amount of sand left in his hour glass.
The day he called Hospice was a peculiarly odd day. One moment I was really content because of an old enemy-like figure contacted me to apologize for the torture she put me through in sixth grade (but that's another story). The next moment my mother called and told me that He called Hospice. That translated to he was ready to leave. He was ready to move on from this life time. Which not an easy concept for me to handle.
I guess out of trying to give me a little more understanding, my mother asked me if I'd be willing to stay a night or two a week with my grandparents. It was only so that my grandmother wouldn't be alone incase anything happening, like if he was to pass in the middle of the night. I agreed, again I was being naïve in thinking that I could handle something like that.
A couple of nights after I agreed to stay with my grandmother, I began thinking about how much he was going to miss when he left earth. Out of no where I started crying. Crying turned to sobbing, and sobbing turned into a panic attack.  I was learning the hard way that I was not ready for such a heavy burden. I couldn't be the first one in our family to find out, much less to be the witness of his death. Out of desperation I called my mother. She listened through all my hysteric sobs and inaudible babbling. She explained to me that I was only suffering from "survivor's guilt".  
As hard as it was, I felt compelled to remain at Poppy's side. Watching the devastating changes wrought by cancer, it could not diminish his dignity and spirit. On September 2nd with the family present, we lost him. Nothing could have hurt more. My childhood memories felt like they were ripped away from me. Saddened as we were at his passing, I know he is at peace and out of pain.
If I learned anything from my time with him and his death: never let your memories go because they will never change, and life is full of beautiful things even through the tough times. I'm still coping but it's getting better.