I don't think anyone ever really knows how to come to terms with death. I've been listening at lot to Blue Spotted Tail off the new Fleet Foxes album, with that ringing line "Why is life made only for to end? / Why must I do all this waiting then?" Indeed, why must I? I constantly thought of my life as a waiting game throughout school, waiting for the next year to end, waiting to graduate, waiting for more freedom, waiting for my life to start and here it comes slipping past, the fleeting enigma.

I try to keep telling myself that somehow, everything is eternal. Even in the laws of science, one thing changes into another and nothing is truly gone forever. However, I'm not sure what comfort all of that is. My grandfather devoted his life to science. As an engineer, there were far too many books on his bookshelf that passed right over my head. Everything from nuclear physics to electronics, even some books in Russian. All these things that made him so much more intelligent than the rest of us. I don't think I ever really knew how much he knew until I scoured those bookshelves. He could fix anything. If some sort of electronic broke, you would take it to him and he'd tinker with it for a while and magically it would be new again.

Naturally, I took his camera, and as I sat in the glass house, you could feel some sort of spark from that place was gone. Every time I think of him, I imagine peering around the door into his office and having him be there. But he's not. All that's there now is an empty chair and the remnants of a long life lived.

As I was driving to the hospice, the last time I saw him, I felt overwhelmed with such pain. Nothing in my life ever hurt as much as it did then, leaping out of my chest as it boiled up threatening to burst from within me. I knew that if I did not go to see him as I passed through Baltimore, I'd regret it, knowing that he'd be gone sooner than all of us were ready. In just two months, the golf-balled sized tumor in his brain swallowed him, and now he's gone. Somewhere, I can only pray, and I do. I pray for him every day and I'm not sure why. I'm not sure if there is something to all of this, but I have to hope that there is. Why is life made only for to end? There just has to be something more.