He was a folksinger. My grandfather. His quiet giant voice was silent now in his final hour. For once, I came to sing to him.
I sung regret so strong the nurses were weeping. Patients rose from their infirmity and out of their starched beds. Birds congregated at the window, and I filled that sterile room with olive trees and eucalypts and shearing sheds and dust. On a tiny thumb piano made from a sardine can I plucked out my tune, and sung of the vine sheltered feasts where he first tasted wine under the table with keen-eyed cousins. Landing on new shores, opportunity reflecting off suburban windows. His children, their children. It was a song of victory.
Heavy rain hammered the window as I reached my crescendo. My voice had barely raised above a whisper. The birds outside in the storm now flung themselves against the glass, desperate. The doorway to the hall filled with lost souls in identical hospital gowns, with wild empty eyes. He knows now what they fear the most.