It's been a year since my father, Eli, and my grandfather, Harry, passed on within 24 from each other. It's been a year, and I still don't know how to digest what happened. How do you say goodbye to two fathers in one day?

My relationship with my father was one of disappointment, anger and frustration (perhaps even abandonment), and throughout the five years preceding his death, we haven't exchanged a word. One night I decided to cut the ties with him, but not entirely right away. I wanted him to show his love for me and need of me, but he never did. So I turned my back and walked away.

Then, suddenly, I'm told that he had a severe CVA and that his situation isn't good. I went to the hospital, mainly to be there for my brother. At that same night, we were called back to the hospital because his condition had deteriorated and when we arrived, we found out he'd had a massive heart attack and that he was now in a coma, intubated and attached to a ventilation machine. Artificial life.

The very next day, my grandfather was admitted to another hospital with light pneumonia.

It took three days for my father to finally give up and leave us. I was sitting by his deathbed for all those days, knowing that if I hadn't had my closure with him yet, this is the time lest I spend the rest of my life in remorse.

When we arrived at the hospital on a Thursday evening, the image of shock, awe and sudden sorrow hit me. On our way to his room, we saw his best friend running out crying in total hysteria. I took a glimpse into the room, knowing what to expect but not expecting my own reaction. So peaceful, lying there under the hospital sheets, no more of that dreadful sound coming from the ventilation machine, no more of the suffering he went through because of his severe diabetes, no more of those convulsions caused by the ventilation machines. He was dead. And so was my soul, for a moment.

I was in there, holding his hand and letting almost five years of anger, disappointment and sadness come out. What a horrible, horrible moment, yet a beautiful one, one of final forgiveness and necessary closure. Suddenly he was my father again and I was saying goodbye to him. I knew that if I hadn't, I would regret that for the rest of my life.

We went home, each in themselves, not speaking.

On the following Friday, we were called by my grandfather to the hospital because he said he wasn't feeling too well.
We arrived, he was pretty much fine. The doctors said he was reacting well to the antibiotics he was being given I.V., but it wasn't the pneumonia that killed him. It was the final sense of letting go, of, according to him, "outliving the last of his foes". He hated my father.

We were there with him until the very last moment. Until his eyes rolled backwards and he stopped breathing. I forced my mother out of the room while the doctors were trying to resuscitate him. The sound of the defibrillators from the hallway was dreadful.
He died fifteen minutes after we left the room. We were standing there, by his bed, again, seeing a figure wrapped in sheets. He was dead. And so was I.

My grandfather has been more of a father to me than my father had ever been. He was the one who always truly cared for me, he was the one I came to when I drew something pretty, he's the one who always smiled when I or my brother received a new rank from the army. I was a corporal when he went. Now I'm a proud first-sergeant, four months away from discharge. And I wish he was here to hug me when I get back home, an Israeli citizen ready and willing to take my first step into the free world.

I was half-glad that my father went first, because, had my grandfather gone first, I would have been devastated to the point of dysfunction.
And now, it's been a year. I miss my grandfather terrible. I want him by my side here, yet I know he's better off there, not sick anymore, not needing his Filipino angel to take care of him. Free, silent, calm. As should I be.

Now I'm here, thoughtful, listening to some terrifically emotional doom metal that soothes me, calms me down, and I'm feeling better.

My drawing, Paranoia II, is dedicated to them.





My dear father(s), I love you. May you both rest in peace for eternity, and I will see you guys again.