• The silhouette stares at the silent man lying on the white bed. The amorphous shadows begin to take shape. He looks around the room and sees the plain bland white walls with a single television hanging from the ceiling across from the bed. There is also a desk with a control on it next to the bed and a monitor right next to that desk. A minute passes by and a loud beeping noise rings. A person bellows a statement and people come frantically rushing in as if there is no tomorrow. That one single apathetic silhouette did not express a single emotion. He stands there, watching on as if it were an unraveling soap opera.

    Beep. Beep. A seven year old child wakes up and looked at the alarm clock lazily. He slammed down the alarm clock to stop the irritating noise. After following his ordinary morning schedule, he walked into the dining room awaiting his breakfast. The ambrosial smell tantalized the boy. He looked down the hall to see his mom providing the normal Lucullan pancakes. His mom approaches him and begins a conversation.

    She asks, “So how was your day yesterday?”

    He answers, “Fine.”

    He asks, “How about you, mommy?”

    She replies, “Your mommy found a cool rock. I think that it will tell me about some special people from the past.”

    “Cool.”

    The dad, approaching from the quiet living room, comes into the dining room as well.

    The child looks up and says, “Daddy, how about your day?”

    The dad answers, “It was good. The geography class that I teach just learned about the troposphere and what climate means.”

    The child has a confused stare on his face. Before he could ask a question, the dad pulls the mom over and begins to whisper. Even though the parents believe that the child was clueless, that is not always the case.

    He has heard people talk about his grandpa in a dramatic way…in a way that he was just about to vanish. He has heard people talk about his grandpa as a psychopathic man. The child always believed that they said it in an antipathetic way because they seemed to dislike the man greatly. He never believed these cruel rumors. The child has always known him as the sole fantastic person who always had amusing stories.

    The bus came and he went to school. Walking in to his first class, the teacher taught him about metamorphosis. She provided the example of a caterpillar changing forms to a cocoon and then into a wondrous butterfly. The child was captivated by the idea. “The wonders of life,” he thought. The next teacher that he arrived to taught him a little math. He learned about the perimeter of a square and how you just have to add up all of the measurement of the sides. Ring. Ring. The phone rang and the teacher picked up.
    He came over and told the child in a sympathetic way, “Son, I’m sorry. I really am. But you have to go home now.

    The child looked up consumed by the man’s shadow, “What?”

    The man replied, “Your grandpa is in the hospital.”

    The child had a blank look on his face and then walked out of the class and to his mother’s car. She drove at ferocious speeds to get to the hospital. The child looked up at the sky to see, ironically enough, an iridescent rainbow. When they arrived, the child and mom rushed into the room. The grandfather was not there. The nurse said, “Ma’am, the doctors say that the patient had a pathological heart attack that was triggered by his mental condition. The doctor just cut through the pericardium and is attempting to replace his heart in order to save him.” After countless hours, the family was led into the operating room. The child drew closer to the bed and looked down. The grandfather gave the child a great hug, and then the line on the monitor remained in a straight line. A stentorian beeping noise came out and the room went dead quiet. The child looked up, oblivious to what just happened.

    That child…was me. When I look back at that moment, I wish I could have reacted more. I wish I was the one that gave him the great big hug instead of the other way around. Being oblivious to my surroundings, I didn’t know that my grandpa died until someone informed me. At the age of fifteen, I would change everything about that moment, regretting it every single second. I could have at least told him that I love him…but I didn’t. My little self didn’t even budge, not even a tear. Grandpa, I wish you a happy life.

    As I finished reading my paper aloud, everyone clapped and a few cried at the poignant essay. I ignored everything having a few tears roll down my face and looked up at the sky, hoping that my grandpa was listening to my report.