I nodded again. Mom closed her eyes.
“My God…”
“Mom, what’s going on?”
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He turned to me.
“Tonight you’re not going anywhere. You will stay by my side.”
When we got home, Mom called my aunt. From the hallway I could only hear fragments of the conversation.
“…he told Lily…”
Silence.
“Yes. Tonight.”
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Then, with a much lower voice, he said:
“I knew this day would come.”
After hearing those words, I couldn’t calm down for the rest of the night. Around eleven o’clock, the doorbell rang.
It was Grandpa. Mom opened the door, but didn’t invite him in.
“Dad, why are you here?”
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“I came to find Lily.”
Mom’s face changed.
“No.”
Grandpa looked at her for a few seconds.
“Sarah, you can’t protect her from everything forever.”
“She’s a girl.”
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“That’s precisely why I want him to be there tonight.”
I was by the stairs, listening to every word. Then Mom started crying all of a sudden.
“But what if tomorrow…?”
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Grandpa interrupted her.
“Don’t talk about tomorrow.”
A chill went through my whole body.
What was going to happen tomorrow?
About half an hour later, Mom suddenly got into my room.
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“Dress yourself.”
“Where are we going?”
He remained silent for a moment.
“To Grandfather’s house.”
When we arrived, I was ready for almost anything.
But Grandpa didn’t take us to his bedroom.
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Instead, he led us to the small closed porch that was in the back of the house.
There were two mattresses placed on the ground.
One was big.
The other was small.
Next to the window was an old telescope.
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I looked at him confused.
Grandpa smiled.
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“This was what I meant when I asked you if you could sleep by my side.”
Mom turned around, as if she didn’t want me to see the tears in her eyes.
“But why did it have to be a secret?” he asked.
Grandpa sat down.
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“Because your mother wouldn’t have allowed it.”
That’s when Mom finally told me what they had been hiding for months.
Grandpa was going to the hospital the next morning.
I needed a serious heart operation.
That was also the reason Mom was constantly telling me not to sit on her lap. A few months earlier, Grandpa had also been operated on a leg and doctors had warned him not to undergo unnecessary efforts.
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I looked at Mom.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want you to be afraid.”
Grandpa took my hand.
“And I didn’t want to go to the hospital before I kept our promise.”
“What promise?”
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He pointed to the telescope.
When I was five, I had once told Grandpa:
“Someday I want to stay up all night with you and see shooting stars.”
I had completely forgotten.
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That night a rare meteor shower was going to occur, and Grandpa had spent months repairing Grandma’s old telescope to fulfill that wish of my childhood before her operation.
Around two in the morning, all three of us were on the porch.
I was on my mattress.
Grandpa, in his.
Mom was sitting between us.
Suddenly, the first trail of light crossed the sky.
“I saw her!” I shouted.
Grandpa laughed.
Then a second appeared.
And a third.
At one point, Mom put her head on Grandpa’s shoulder.
And suddenly I understood something I hadn’t even thought about before that night.
My mother was not afraid of grandpa.
I was afraid of losing it.
The next morning, they took Grandpa to the hospital.
The operation lasted more than five hours.
I spent all that time sitting in the waiting room, holding in my hand the small lid of his old telescope.
When the doctor finally got out, Mom got up immediately.
The doctor smiled.
“Everything went well.”
It’s been eighteen years since that day.
Grandpa is very old now.
But every year, on the same date, I keep going home.
We placed two mattresses on the porch, put the telescope next to the window and wait for the first shooting star to appear.
And every time, without exception, Grandpa smiles and asks me:
“So tonight you’re going to stay by my side too?”
And from the other room, Mom always shouts,
“Just make sure this time you don’t fall asleep on top of you, George!” 😭❤️
A mother’s heart is always thinking about her children and wishing they were safe. Do you agree? ❤️
