Memory #12 (1 of 2)

Part 1.

In August of 2003, I was home for the weekend from college visiting my family in Iowa. My grandpa (my dad's dad) was coming in to town from Colorado and was going to arrive in town that Sunday evening. I remember sitting in my friend Lulu's library that Sunday afternoon (fancy way of saying computer room) and just loving the afternoon. I left her house and headed home to meet everyone for dinner, my grandpa should have been there by then. When I walked inside my parent's home, my dad was on the phone and pacing back and forth, in a loud voice, a panicked voice. He hung up and yelled at me to find my brother, that my grandpa had been in a car accident on Interstate 80, a few miles from our house. I just stood there, frozen. I found my brother then my mom and dad left for the hospital my grandpa was taken to. For some reason, my dad didn't want us to go, so we just sat on the couch, waiting for them to call. The phone rang shortly after they left. It was my grandma (my mom's mom) calling to let us know that my Uncle Ricky had just been rushed to the hospital. My sweet uncle. When he was two years old he had a stroke and encountered several developmental disabilities as he grew. In his 40's, he was at about a second grade reading level. The previous year, 2002, was the first year he lived by himself, in his own apartment. I hung up with my grandma and couldn't believe that in under 30 minutes my grandpa was in the hospital as well as my uncle.
It turns out that a girl driving West on I-80 fell asleep and her car hit the median and flew up in to the air and crashed in to the driver side of my grandpa's car.
My uncle went to the hospital because he was having trouble breathing. We found out that he had lung and liver cancer. I remember going to visit him and bringing one of my favorite poems. I tacked it up on the bulletin board in his room. I was too sad to talk. My grandma wanted me to read the poem to him, but I couldn't. He died a week after being admitted to the hospital. A close family friend told me at the funeral that when she had gone to visit him, he had taken her hand and whispered, Please don't tell my parents that I am dying, they would be too sad. That memory kills me. For so many reasons.