The sliding doors hiss open as I run into the Taipei hospital, breath ragged, heart thudding. A nurse bows her head, her mouth forming an apology I can’t bear to hear. I push past and her words dissolve into white noise–I know it can’t be true. I know I will be able to hear his voice again, feel his calloused gardener’s hands, smell the faint smell of oolong tea and cigarettes on his clothes–
But I am too late. His face is no longer one I recognize–but that of a stranger’s, devoid of life and joy, cheeks sunken and hollow. His skin, once golden from long walks under the sun, hangs pale and waxy like wet paper stretched thin over bones.
Cancer had taken him somewhere I could not follow.
“I’m so sorry,” a nurse whispers, resting a hand on my shoulder. “Your grandfather passed away two hours ago.”
Just two hours, and I would’ve made it in time.
***
Hospital staff murmur their condolences to me. My phone buzzes with missed calls from my teacher asking about my absence. Yet I collapse into silence. The crawling sensation of a thousand tiny needles pierces my skin; the eternal quiet from Grandpa, my fear of death, and the suffocating loneliness all blur together and cloud my thoughts. I no longer hear the shuffle of his slippers at dawn, his teasing when I hide behind my phone instead of going on a walk to Family Mart with him.
Our relationship had been a patchwork: every-other-year visits to Taiwan, handwritten letters, and care packages filled with special ramen flavors I couldn’t find in America. But what roots itself deepest in me is his voice–off-key, raspy, yet joyful and unapologetically alive.
What I remember: Grandpa slipping creamy niú gá táng candy into my hand when my mom wasn’t looking. Letters from Taiwan, addressed to me in his shaky handwriting, adorned with tiny doodles of fruit and street cats. His reassurance that the chemotherapy treatment was working.
What I don’t remember: His cough deepening into a wet, rattling sound that scraped his chest and brought up blood. Bones pressing sharply beneath skin that bruised at the slightest touch. The yellowing of his skin, his eyes, his nails, even his teeth. He died two years earlier than the doctors had predicted. He hid the truth from us, protecting us from the weight of his pain until the very end.
***
I’m fourteen again, crying after my grandpa’s cancer diagnosis, cheeks sticky with tears, my nose red and raw from rubbing it on my sleeve. Though the doctor says he has four years left, nothing seems to have changed. The kitchen smells like ginger, garlic, and the faint, smoky sweetness of his tea. Grandpa hums as he folds dumplings, dough creasing beneath his fingers.
“Will I be pretty? Will I be rich? Que sera, sera,” he trills, his voice wobbling off-key.
“Grandpa,” I say between sniffles, “that’s not even the right tune.”
He ignores me and instead, ladles dumplings into my bowl, careful not to let the soup spill over. The kitchen lamp casts streaks of gold across my face, warming my cheeks. I bite into a dumpling and savour the pork, chive, and hot soup that oozes from the tender dough. For a moment, the ache inside me loosens.
“Aren’t you sad?” I whisper, unable to understand how he could still find joy.
“Sad?” he echoes. Then, slowly, he shakes his head. “I have my garden of dragon fruit cacti, delicious bao zhi and dumplings to feast on, and a granddaughter to make me laugh.”
I stare at him and say, “But you’re sick.”
He sets down his chopsticks and takes my hand, his thumb brushing over the back of it like wind through a field. He points to the peach tree outside his apartment window.
“Every winter, it looks dead,” he says. “But underneath, it’s still alive, waiting for the right time to bloom again.” His eyes crinkle. “I think I’m like that tree. And even if I don’t see another spring, I know you will. And you’ll remember.”
He hugs me, and even though I don’t completely understand what he means, a smile colored with a thousand different shades of bittersweet memories slowly rises to my mouth.
***
Two hours–just two hours–if my mom and I had known that he really wasn’t getting better, that it really wasn’t four years left but two, if I had really listened to Grandpa’s voice that sounded thinner after each call instead of nodding distractedly while chasing the things I thought mattered at the time–like college and careers and bullet points on a résumé to build a life when I hadn’t even thought about what I truly wanted–if I had paused to ask for time off or noticed how quickly he was fading with cells mutinying in his body, his camera off because his face was too gaunt, because he couldn’t swallow food–maybe I would’ve realized what was happening. His death was so sudden, even the doctors were surprised. But maybe I would’ve made it in time. Maybe I would’ve been there in time to talk to him one last time, and maybe I would’ve understood earlier that dumplings made with love and stories told under a yellow kitchen light mean more than anything I could earn or win or prove, but I didn’t.
Now I sit beside my mother on a plane back to the U.S., tracing the wrinkles in her tear-streaked hands while the hum of the engines fills the silence between us. I think about how the peach tree outside his apartment will still bloom this spring, even if he’s not there to see it, and how he didn’t want the weight of cancer to reach me. But all I feel now is the weight of a silence I can never fill, because no amount of remembering will bring back the warmth of his hand, or the sound of his voice, or the crinkle of his eyes when I laugh.
So I sit, above the clouds, the cold air wrapping around me. My mother sleeps beside me, her lashes still wet. I think about the things I should’ve said to Grandpa, the hugs I should’ve given, the songs we should’ve sung together. I think about those two hours I was too late. I gaze out the airplane window, the clouds below a blur of blossom pink and mourning gray. And somewhere between heaven and earth, I softly whisper, “Que sera, sera. Whatever will be, will be.”
Grace Ji is a homeschooled rising senior with academic interests in engineering, history, and political science. Her writing tends to focus on analyzing U.S. policies or personal narrative essays.