when i saw my grandfather today i wanted to go home immediately.

he is not my grandfather anymore.

he is rapidly turning into what they call a vegetable. last night he went to the bathroom. when he was making his way back to his chair where he was sleeping, he fell, could not get up, and spent the rest of the night on the floor. my family and i went to visit today, and as soon as i laid eyes on him i knew he was going. he almost seemed delirious. he would twitch. he would doze off and then just awaken, sometimes moaning, sometimes trying to make what seemed like conversation. when we tried talking to him, he would not respond, and only after tapping him lightly and talking directly to him would he mutter anything that could be taken as an answer. he cannot walk, he cannot stand, he cannot feed, clean, or relieve himself without some sort of assistance. my grandmother refuses to do it. she would not buy him food. she did not pick him up off the floor when she found him there. and whenever we try to help him, she yells at us in italian. she is insane.

i have never ever seen my grandfather like that before. he has been sick in the past, in fact, i think he has always been sick, but he has always been alive. he was the type of person who never made a big deal, never complained, was always smiling and happy. this was the man who would drive half an hour to bring my a slice of pizza when i was hungry. and now this man could not even get up on his own two feet.

when people are alive their eyes shine. they have a presence. he did not have that. his face was gray. his eyes were just two more failing organs in his body. there was no expression in them. he looked like there was nothing left for him. like he had lived and seen it all and there was nothing else he needed to stay for. his being, his human-ness, it was not there, it was gone, he was just a medicated mass sitting on the chair, and we would talk and be normal and he would just exist with nothing to contribute. it was like the living dead.

when i saw taryn in her casket i knew that the body i was looking at was not the same person that i had known. it was just a shell. and that is what it was like to see him today. he was a shell of my grandfather. i know i will never see my true grandfather again, that from here on end i will be looking at a bottle of pills and not a human. from here everything goes downward, because i can feel it. i may be wrong, he may make a miraculous recovery, but the spark, the vitality that was once there is not there any longer. this is a man who is in a lot of pain and does not want to live. sometimes i want it to be over, i want him just to go or get better, because why spend your life in a hospital bed hooked up to monitors if you didn't have to. it's not like i want him to die, but i just think it would be easier, it would just get it all over with, it would insure his happiness.

i just cannot shake the feeling i had today, such a cold and disturbing feeling. when the phone rings i am always fearing that it will be the call. i know that soon i am going to go for a last visit, and then do everything like i did with taryn. it's a little easier this time, well not really, it's just that now i know what to expect. but to think of him lying there cold and blue and to be put away forever, i can never get used to that.

i don't feel like talking to anyone. they will all say "oh i'm sorry." and i am sure they mean it too. but i just feel so horribly alone, that it makes it all the worse. i just want someone to hug, someone to fall into, and i don't have that and i know i never will. i just feel like everything is crumbling, like everything i was happy for is all slipping away, and that no one even cares.