My mother was with him when he died. She sat there beside him and read a passage from the Bible. I was not there because I was in school but I know exactly how it happened. First the fingertips went blue, then the eyelids, then the heart began to slow down and his breaths became labored. I know that the last things to go were his eyes. I believe in eyes. Eyes are what make up a person. They give everything away about someone yet conceal their deepest thoughts and greatest secrets. My grandfather had pale, intoxicating eyes that could spot you even when his back was turned to you. His eyes never died until the very end. When the needles and pain were over.

He died on a Tuesday. He died on a Tuesday 6 months ago yet I am sitting here writing about it now, at midngight on a Thursday night. I was taking a shower when all of a sudden these words came to me, as I had yet another vision of him lying in the casket. He died 6 months ago but I am not over it at all and I don't know when I ever will be. His death is merely a wound in which the band-aid keeps falling off. It will never be over.

His boss had given him a cell phone. him and his boss had been close because my grandfather had worked till the very last fucking day. The cell phone was sort of hi tech, especially for an Italian man who could not read English. I always played with that phone, and my grandfather would always accidentally put it in manner mode and not know how to get it out. I remember the wekk before he died, he called me from his house 30 minutes away. His voice, I remember it, it sounded so happy, like it had always been, even though he was in excruciating pain. I could hear him smiling over the thin plastic wires as he asked me how to get the phone to ring again. I told him how. And then he told me he loved me, and I said the same to him. Those were the last words I ever spoke to that man.

When he was no longer alive I had a couple dreams about him. There is one I always think about, and it is called the Parking Lot Dream.

There is a parking lot in which my grandfather and I are walking. Rows and rows of cars are lined up, each blurring softly into the next. He is holding my hand. There, on the lefthand side, is my grandfather's car, a 93 sky blue Chevy Cavalier. His grasp disappears from mine as he makes his way over to the car. I watch him walk over to it and I know something that he doesn't. I know that once he opens the door he will die, and I start screaming for him to come back. The screaming. In my mind I can just hear myself shouting with such a force that I have never owned, not even in my most enraged moments. But he does not hear me. He keeps walking until he is standing right next to the door. When he gets there he looks at me and smiles. Then he opens the door.

Then the dream ends.

Now that I am 17 I drive that car. I would not trade it for anything in the world and when I say that I mean it. Every time I get into that thing I feel him there. Every time.

I have not had another dream since the parking lot one, but I think about him everyday. I have developed this fear of death. It's beginning to take its toll on my mental well-being, but I have not said anything to anybody. I will just randomly think about being dead, about what it will be like, knowing that one day I will not be able to breathe and talk and hear or do anything else, that there is a large eternal unknown and it bothers me like nothing else. I am afraid of becoming old and suffering and watching my youth slip away like my grandfather's hand slipped from mine in that dream. I'm so scared of it and yet I can do nothing about it.

I do not believe that he is dead. Today I was talking about him to someone and I referred to him as if he were still alive. I do not believe anyone is dead. Some people think that when you die you just rot in the ground and a flower grows on top of you. Not me. I think we go somewhere, I think we stay in the same place but we're invisible. It may be stupid and superstitious and completely wrong but I believe in it. I don't know if that man will ever be truly dead to me.

What I had with him was life and living with its ups and downs and boring parts and fun parts and disappointing and sad parts. It's very hard to lose something that has been with you for 16 years. I thought that with all that's been on my mind that I would be able to forget it. No. My mind goes there all the time. There's a time when you have to leave everything you know and accept that it's gone and start over and try not to make the same mistakes. The innocent glow of childhood is gone. That part of my life where we all just lived without asking any questions doesn't exist. Everything is a question, and nothing is an answer. I'm done.