My grandpa meant the world to me. He taught me everything I know about softball, and we shared a great passion for the sport. The batting cages at Putt-Putt was our favorite place to spend time together. We hit, caught, and joked around together, but he would always push me to get better.  My grandpa and I also went fishing at Oxbow Lake if we weren’t at the batting cages. I caught mostly sticks and rocks, but we spent our time laughing and solving the world’s problems. Even though we butted heads at times, we were inseparable. 

Grandpa Ray grew sicker and sicker. He was diagnosed with brain cancer first; then when I was twelve years old, the cancer spread, killing the entire left side of his lung.  Lastly, bone cancer took over every inch of his body. 

“There is nothing more that we can do,” concluded his team of doctors to my grandma.

After being hospitalized for almost three weeks, it was a bitter-sweet moment when my family could bring my grandpa home. The Hospice Center moved a hospital bed into the very tiny living room at my grandparents’ house. Their house wasn’t a place to play hide and go seek or even freeze tag anymore; instead, it was turned into a patient’s room. Lights more often than not were turned off with the TV almost always muted, and silence filled the air all the time. When my grandpa became even sicker, deathly sick, my family decided to move him into the Hospice Center to make it more comfortable for him in his final days. 

On March 27, 2015, my step-aunt Tonya picked me up from school, and we drove the ten minutes over to the Hospice Center in Defiance to see my grandpa one last time. The normal ten- minute drive there seemed to be endless. Staring out the window, not engaging in conversation, I wondered what I would see when I walked into my grandpa’s room. After pulling into the parking lot, I did not want to get out of the vehicle. Reluctantly, I unbuckled my seatbelt, grabbed my aunt’s rough hand, and drug my feet up to the sliding glass doors of the hospital. 

Muffled cries of families filled the empty hallways. It was as if we had walked into a vacant building. We twisted through hallways and sitting rooms, and we finally found my grandpa's room: number 26. 

I opened the slightly cracked door but waited for my aunt to walk first into the room. 

‘I don’t want to go in,’ I thought to myself. 

The room was sunshine colored, even with the blinds closed. In the hard hospital bed, my grandpa lay. He remained motionless like a skeleton, his skin was ghost-colored and sunken in. His eyes were closed, and I could see almost every bone is his skinny body.  I kept my head down to avoid seeing my grandpa in the state that he was but couldn’t keep the trudging, slow paced beeping of the heart monitor or the struggled breathing of his out of my head. Trying to drown out the noise, I sat next to my mom on the cold, leather couch in the corner of the room. 

“How was school?” asked my mom.

“What did you have for lunch?” she questioned again.

Not answering, my mom eventually led me over to my Grandpa Ray. I leaned over to give him a hug. My hug was gentle and soft like a blanket. My warmth met the coldness of his skin, and the bones in his arm protruded when he touched my hand. He struggled to sit up, so I leaned in, knowing he wanted to tell me something. 

“I love you, L.C, and I know I never told you enough.” My eyes filled with tears, but he continued on, “But just remember: Keep your eye on the ball, and you’ll do perfect every time.” 

Waves of tears rushed down my rose-colored cheeks, and I pulled away to hug my mom. 

Eleven short hours later, my world changed forever. My grandpa passed away. Losing my grandpa was just like losing my best friend. I learned at a young age that life can end or change at any time. My grandpa taught me that I should always go for what I want to achieve and to be daring. I’ve learned that I need to tell the people important to me that I love them because it may just be my last words to them.