DEFENDER'S RAP

• I saw the grim look on my father’s face and I knew it before he told me the news
• My grandpa had died that morning, it crept up slowly and fully opened the wound
• The curtain closed over his eyelids as an eternal silence seemed to sweep over the room
• Just days ago I was over the moon, I guess I never really thought he would be fully consumed
• I expected to hear that “Hello, Soren” my mind pretended it no longer knew of his health
• He looked calm, had I not known I would have thought he was takin one of his naps, a wax figure of his usual self
• My grandmother pushed his hair back for the last time and simply said, “He needs a shave.”
• If she could still drink water and breathe oxygen, why was he something they had to keep away
• Moments...no, eternities passed as my grandfather slipped away and drifted up into the stars
• With every light turned on, the room felt completely dark, and so we took the younger cousins to the park
• I turned to see my sisters and cousins together and remembered how it felt to be happy again
• As the younger cousins raced toward the playground just like I used to, me and my older sister sat down on the bench
• For what must have been an hour, we talked and joked, bringin up those stories from when back in the day, rememberin all those years
• I could have sworn he was sittin with us, his smile reflectin in my eyes, his jokes that never failed to make me laugh echoin in my ears
• About a week later, we left for Montana, to bury my grandfather in the town where he had spent his childhood days
• It was a small town where everybody knew each other, a reminder of a simpler time before that dreaded arrival of change
• The locals all had each others’ shoulders to cry on and people who helped them experience the joy and survive through the pain
• And while it was nice to revisit the beginning, the streets were foreign to me, I had only been there once before, a long time ago
• But as my family walked through them with me, I began to feel that I was home, even when we die we are never quite alone