On February 17, 2015 I gave my grandfather a coconut donut from Top Donut. It was the beginning of winter break, and we wanted to start it off right. What better way than with donuts from the best local donut shop. My grandfather, Pa, was a retired Lowell firefighter. After my grandmother had passed away a few months before I was born, he moved into an in-law apartment attached to my house. For ten years he was just a short walk down the hall. Growing up, I spent many mornings, eating English muffins at his kitchen nook, and also watching reruns of Frasier and Seinfeld without my parents’ approval. It was our secret.

Coconut donuts were his favorite breakfast pastry. That morning, I handed him the bag. With trembling hands he told me, “thank your mother for everything she’s done for me.” I thought it was weird, questioning the statement as I shut his door.

Half an hour later sitting at the table, watching a movie with my parents, our faces went blank. Much different from his usual quiet approach we heard the scuffing and thumps of my grandfather descending the stairs. He turned into the kitchen. His body had been morphed to the right side, and his tongue slipped out the side of his mouth. My father rushed to him. My mother called 911. I ran to the top of the stairs crying and confused.

From the stairs I heard EMTs and firefighters take my grandfather away. As they carried him out I could hear his slurred voice still managing to make the firefighters laugh, as he recalled stories of his days as one of them.

A few weeks later I went to visit Pa for the first time at rehab. My parents offered to take me plenty of times in the weeks after his stroke. However, the image of him that day choked me. I thought if I were to see him it would validate that he was changed. I felt too, that I had done this to him. My mom felt seeing him might give me the chance to heal. She didn’t force me to go, but I agreed finally after weeks, that seeing him might help.

On the way there I day-dreamed of him – picking me up and twirling me in the air as he did when I was a little girl. Only as I entered his room I saw a man who wasn’t the same man I grew up living with and knowing as a child. His face had changed and so had his attitude. He was frustrated. Unable to find words. He stammered my name as I ran out of the room.

I raced to the window of a nearby waiting room. Trying to breathe. Only with each breath I choked on tears streaming down my face--my body numb from head to toe. Everything went silent, like rolling up the windows when you are entering the highway. The palms of my hands were sweaty. Nausea took over.

My mother came to look for me and try to calm me down. She was unaware that I was having my first panic attack, though I wouldn’t know the words to describe what I was feeling for eight years. I would go on to experience such attacks for years to come.

I made my mother sleep with me for weeks as the night terrors of that moment at the rehab center replayed. My grandfather never recovered, never came home. I only saw him once more at his nursing home on October 15, 2018 two days before he passed. Tubes down his throat, struggling to breathe, we both sat there.

From that day forward I have always been anxious around letting people into my life. Anxious about having the same fate as him. It’s hard to watch someone you love, turn into someone you no longer know. I’m still healing.

© Valerie. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.