The Beginning of a New Me

Ch. 2 - Losing Grandpa and Uncle

Trigger warning - d*ath, od

I was at school studying for the grade 8 exams, and looking forward to school ending. Today, January 19th, is the day we go to our mom and grandma's house to visit. Our foster parent, Rocky, arrives at the school once school is done, and drives my sister and I to our mom and grandma's. We go in and hug our mom, grandma, and grandpa. Our grandma says "Dennis should be up by now or he'll be late for work. I'll go wake him up." She goes to his room, knocks, then opens the door. "Call the ambulance Ben!!" She says. He does and quickly goes to uncle's room to see why Gigi said that. We follow behind him, and see uncle lying on his bed 'sleeping'. May goes to his side and nudges his leg to wake him up but his leg barely moved. At first I was smiling thinking it was a prank, but after a while my smile goes away. Our mom grabs me and May and brings us out to the living room, as May and I leave the hallway, our mom falls down onto her knees. May and I help our mom up, and to a couch. The ambulance arrive shortly after and go to uncle's room. They try to revive him, but then later come out to the living room and say "He's been gone for a while." We all start to cry and the medics take his body, Papa tries to go with them but can't because of him being in a wheelchair. Soon, Rocky shows up and May and I go running to him and hug him. He takes us as our family is distracted, he goes to Dairy Queen and gets us ice cream. We then go to his work, bootcamp at a school, and tells us to write what we thought, anything we felt, on paper. 

*1 year later*

Over the months, my grandpa had been getting sick. He got so sick one day, he had to go to the hospital. Our visits were there so that we could see him. He was on dialysis, and one day he said he quit. One doctor came barging in saying something that upset all of us. Mum, grandma, May and I all went out into the hallway to wait. "I don't want Papa to die." I said while crying. After Papa quit his dialysis he got worse so he had to go to the Hospice house. The nurses at the hospital didn't think he'd survive for over 3 months. But he proved them all wrong and survived until February 11. Before he had gone to hospice, in the hospital he grabbed my hand and said "Never let me go." Before he had passed away, on one of our visits our grandma had told us that he didn't recognize anyone. We arrived at hospice, went to his room, and I broke down. Papa would always dance with me when I would hug him when arriving at the house for a visit, but now he can't. When we arrived, we walked into the room he was in, and I broke down crying. Seeing my Papa like that and not him recognizing us hit me hard. It broke my heart. I gave him a hug and said "Papa it's me, it's Luka." When the visit ended, I gave him a hug while crying, and I didn't want to leave him. But Rocky would be mad. The day Papa died was when it was a visit day. May and I were dropped off, and our grandma walked through the door after we arrived. Then the phone rang. It was the hospice house. They told my grandma that Papa had died 15 minutes after she had left. We all went to the Hospice, went to the room Papa had stayed in. I broke down. He was the one I had danced with, and had been told "Never let me go." I was close with Papa. He nicknamed me Buttons, because I would always count the buttons on his shirts. When I was younger I would "use" him as a punching bag, for fun and I never did it hard.