Have you ever heard the sound of a man dying?
I have.
August 21st, 1998- Orlando, Florida. I awoke to a sound that still haunts me to this day. My grandpa was struggling to cry out as he laid on the floor of our hotel room having a stroke. I was in a deep sleep and then I heard it. A sound I cannot, nor want to try, to recreate. I sat up in the bed, sat on the side of the bed that faced the wall. As I stood I turned my body in the direction of the sound. And then I saw him. He was on the floor, the left side of his body slumped over. There as a split moment where I remained frozen, not comprehending what I was seeing. I called for my cousin who woke to see the horror.
On that Friday morning I learned that the strongest of men can fall. Monday morning he was gone.
But that sound. The sound that started the most torturous weekend of my life. The sound of despair.
It’s a sound that can’t be erased from my memory. A sound that will forever be the song of loss.
For all the things that my grandpa told me in his life, it’s a shame that those were his final sounds.
Orlando, Florida, touted as one of the happiest places on earth. It became my hell. A place where I lost my grandpa. A place where one minute I was a child and the next I was an adult. A place where my life would be forever altered. And a place where I heard the sound, that haunting sound.
Off Script 