My Grandpa

I must be missing something. How does food poisoning turn into cancer- brain cancer?

I know i’m young, only a child, only 11 years old, but i’m not stupid or blind. Food poisoning, that’s what you told me, that grandpa had come back from his hunting trip with a bad case of food poisoning, as harmless as a stomach ache - you know, nothing major.

And that’s the reason he stays in bed all day, and is always throwing up, and doesn’t  leave the house- even to go to the casino.  That food poisoning is why he is losing so much weight, why he is beginning to be all skin and bone- fragile and frail. That grandpa, this once big, tall, and intimidating man is now destined to be bedridden for the rest of his days.

He is dying a little everyday. You must see me as fragile and fraile too, you think i can’t take the truth- that what he has isn’t food poisoning, but something much more lethal. That this isn’t going to go away or get better or just pass. By years end, he’ll be gone. You know it and i know it too. You don’t have to spell it out for me, how he won’t see my graduate high school, or see my brother graduate college.  You didn’t have to tell me, because the sorrow, the truth, is written all over your faces.