Sunrise/Sunset

Jul 10, 2026

This is how a man looks, a 95-year-old man, a month before he dies: teeth have left black holes in his smile, and his smile is like a child’s, and the remainder of his hair is white and glistening.

I drove to Pittsburgh to visit my grandpa after hearing he got transferred from his nursing home to the hospital.

His body is strewn with tubes—tubes in his nose, in his arms, his stomach, his throat, like he is suddenly plugged into life itself. He hasn’t been able to eat for weeks because food was going into his lungs, so the doctors are streaming nutrients into his body intravenously. He didn’t like the hospital food anyway, he jokes. Much easier this way.

I sit down on the small bed and realize how tiny his body seems. His lips are dry and scaling. He wants to tell me a dream.

“I love hearing dreams,” I say, scooting closer to him in the bed and leaning forward to catch his words.

His voice comes out in a mere whisper: “It’s a recurring dream,” I think he said. “I kept having it all night long.”

The house where my dad and uncle grew from babies to men, with the ivy and the garden and the bright kitchen—all of this had been converted into a hospital, in his revision, and the residents were mute. He asked for his wife, but no one could tell him where she was. He eventually found her in a little cot in a corner, scrunched into a ball like a fetus, while the others sprawled their arms and legs and sank themselves into big, cushioned beds.

I lean back, thinking of something I’d once heard—that my grandma never wanted to die in a hospital. That her dying wish was to go peacefully in her own home, where she’d lived most of her life. I wonder if this is his last nagging regret, bubbling up from his subconscious.

I think of the eight years when my stubborn self didn’t speak to him because I was angry that he gave his attention to his prized violin student, a virtuoso, rather than me—me playing second chair with the violin he gave me, him rarely showing up to my recitals.

I hand him my tube of chapstick and watch as he glides it over his lips in awkward strokes, eventually using both hands because they are shaking so much.

“Last night, I dreamt I was walking next to the ocean,” I offer.

“That means you’re going to have a long life,” he assures, in his all-knowing, grandfather way. Only later do I realize he was probably trying to make me feel confident about my own health issues, not interpreting a dream image.

In his soft, raspy voice, he tells me about trips he took to Europe and says I’ll go there, too, one day, if I want.

Suddenly I realize how bored he must be—and how disoriented, when he asks me if it’s morning or night, dawn or dusk. He can’t tell. He doesn’t remember when he’s slept; they occasionally give him sleeping pills for that, and mealtimes no longer serve as markers.

Of course, I knew the answer, but for a second I hesitated before telling him it was getting late, and I had to get going.