"Love is watching someone die"

I'll always remember today as the day when my grandfather died.
It must have been about 3am when the phone rang with the news. It was before 6am when my father left for his funeral, 600km away, leaving wife and daughters behind. There was no need for everyone to go. And the only reason he went through all that trouble was because it was what you could call an obligation.

The saddest thing about this event was not death itself, but how he was not mourned. Not by his grandchildren, not by his son. When he needed them, there was no one around because that's what he brought upon himself.

Everybody dies. What can actually be different is if you are going to have someone by your side just before you do, someone who hopes you make it, someone who holds your hand. The meaning of life is not life itself, but it's something we find in death.