By the time he sought medical treatment for the headaches, the tumor had advanced enough to be deemed inoperable.  He started treatment, a mix of meds and chemo, and for a while he was doing well, or at least well enough.  The cancer was in remission, the headaches were infrequent, and he was more or less in good spirits.  But it didn’t last…

After a few months he was admitted to the hospital for more extensive treatment, and some months later moved to a nursing home.  There the goal was simply to make him as comfortable as possible while he waited to die.  That was where we were headed.

I was in school, physically at least, when she’d come to get me.  The schools receptionist came into my classroom, and after apologizing to my teacher for the disruption, asked me to accompany her to the office where my mother was waiting for me.  I rose slowly and followed the nice woman silently through the halls.  My mother was standing near the reception desk and, although she had no doubt done her best to look presentable, it was obvious that she had been crying.  I couldn’t look at her for fear I’d start crying myself, so I stared through my greasy hair at the ground as I followed her to the car.  We got into the car without saying a word.  As we pulled out of the parking lot she finally answered the question I had been to afraid to ask.  “We’re going to get your sister,” she said, “And then we’re going to the home.  This might be your last chance to see him.”  I started crying immediately…

To say I started crying though, is somewhat misleading.  I didn’t whimper, whine, or groan.  I didn’t burst into tears.  That simply wasn’t my way.  I lifted my legs to my chest, wrapped my arms around them, and buried my face in my knees.  Then, with my face well hidden behind a shaking wall of flesh and bone, I let the tears seep trough my tightly clenched eyes.  The next thing that I remember is walking through the home towards my uncle’s room.  I was still crying.  There were no more tears in my eyes, nor did my lips continue to quiver, but I was still crying.

My grandmother was waiting outside my uncles room with my aunts.  They were crying too, but in the normal way.  Once again I was compelled to stare at the ground.  Whatever time passed between then and when I entered his room was lost to a blur of hugs, sobs, and whispers.  I walked into his room and slowly lifted my head to face my uncle writhing in his bed.  At the sight of him my heart fainted and fell into the pit of my stomach.  He was as white as the sheets on his bed, and his fairly large frame was almost all that was left of him.  He looked like…  Well, he looked like what he was; a once strong and jovial man who was now dying of brain cancer.

I’d been to see him several times prior and,  while he hadn’t looked well, he hadn’t looked like that.  Like he was going to die…  soon.  It was his eyes, I think, that did my heart in.  They would open slowly and float toward one of us and then, as he tried to focus, they would jut around and shiver before falling closed again.  All this in a matter of seconds, over and over.  I closed my eyes and tried to picture him as he was.  Although a thousand images blazed through my mind’s eye, that last haunting picture seemed to overlap them all.  We didn’t stay long.

AS we left I gave him a hug and kissed his cheek.  “I love you,” I said trying my best to hide the sorrow in my voice.  And at that moment, although I probably imagined it, I could swear that for just a second he looked my right in eyes and tried to smile.  Just for a second…

He died a few days later, and a piece of myself died with him.