This is my grandma and grandpa. My grandpa is still dying, and it gets more sad and more difficult to see him every time I visit. I love both of them so very much. He cannot speak coherently, but he is at St. Theresa's, a very nice home/hospice in Bexley and my grandma gets to visit him twice a day. It is so frustrating because every time I go there, they are feeding him, which takes hours, and every time he tries to tell me something, they put another bite of food in his mouth.

I want to take him outside in the garden, but he is already fighting off pneumonia so I can't. My grandpa is the only father I have ever known. My own dad left when I was a baby and my grandpa has been the one who told me that I was extremely intelligent, that I could be anything I wanted to be, that I should never let people walk all over me. He knows I hate fights and conflicts and will run away rather than facing things, even when I should, and he always told me that I was worth it. He wanted everyone to know that I was special. He believed that I was.

He bought me the newest dictionaries every Christmas, and every time I saw him he would ask me to spell and define some impossible word he had looked up. He read the dictionary for fun. He always wanted to know two things about everyone in my life - the meaning of their last name and where they were from. On days when I was upset, he would ask me, "What is your primary worry?" What a great question - it made me cry every time.

I never thought I would hurt so badly over losing him. He did drive me crazy because he was also a little bit crazy himself. He always wanted to know my weight and never hesitated to tell me if I looked like I was eating too much. To say that he had a dislike for poor people would be an understatement - he was not exactly compassionate towards people who were different than him. He once called the CIA because he thought Al-Quaida was building a secret cell underneath his house and he was notoriously paranoid of any kind of perceived dangers - bad drivers, touching the pews at church or shopping carts at the grocery - either of which might have been contaminated by a person with a cold who carelessly chose to spread germs to the innocent, healthy shoppers and churchgoers. He had a terrible habit of repeating the same quotations and phrases over and over again, for months on end, without regard for his captive audiences, who had heard, "The knowledge of reality is secret knowledge" at least 160 times.

But my grandpa - he loved me and he still loves me. He is the only man in the world who I can say that about. He has loved me for my entire life. He was there when I was born, and I will be there when he dies, and I will never go to a bookstore or a doctor without a broken heart and an empty place where he has always been.