"Poppa, why are you crying?"

"Poppa, why are you crying?", asked my little Layla. I quickly wiped away my tears and gave her a big smile and held out my arms welcoming her over for a hug. She smiled back and ran into my arms. She gave me the biggest hug ever. I asked her, "So how was school today?". Layla replied, "Oh you know, the same old stuff, but I got on green again!" I said "the same old stuff" in a playful inquisitive way? What does that even mean? "You're only in the 2nd grade. Surely, you're not bored of school already are you?"

Layla laughed and said she was hungry and so her question about my crying was quickly forgotten as we headed to the kitchen for grilled cheese sandwiches, chocolate chip cookies, and milk. Such was our routine every day for most of her life or at least since she started walking. On our way to the kitchen, Layla reached out and grabbed my hand.

Layla has been my little shadow since she was an infant. The two of us have interacted daily from our daily naps in my chair with her asleep on my chest to both of us sneaking an ice cream before dinner and hoping Nana didn't catch us. Now that she's school age, I keep her after school so her parents can work. And yes, we've been known to get into some shenanigans ever so often.

The 8 or so years have quickly passed and now she is 9 years old and finishing second grade. She is growing into a beautiful young girl and apparently, I'm at fault for some of her misbehavior at school. For example, I had told her on numerous occasions that if someone was mean to her, she should growl at them like maybe a wolf would. The first time was cute. The second, third, fourth, and yes, fifth times weren't so much.

Layla is a little spoiled. I look at this as my duty. After all, she is my only grandchild. I figure her parents should have the role of well, being her parent. I want to be the doting grandfather who gave in to every want and whim. After all, what could an 8 or 9-year-old possibly want that isn't reasonable. We won't discuss the pony or parrot for now. My point is I saw no issues with buying her the occasional candy bar or barbie doll.

I made a point of picking her up from school every day that I could. I exercised her imagination as much as I could too. We would often pretend we were in a spaceship traveling to faraway planets. Sometimes, we would pretend that she was a princess explorer and I was her knight protector.

I suppose you could say I was her playmate. One of our most favorite things to do was to take walks. When she was still a toddler, I would take her out to the family ranch and we would ride the UTV for a while and walk the trails for hours. She always enjoyed being in the woods. Towards the end of her first year of school, I became very ill and the walks stopped. Sadly, we've never been able to resume them due to my health. But this hasn't stopped us from spending time together.

Layla is at an age now where most kids can quickly be lost to technology and their friends. I see it happen every day and Lord knows, I'm guilty of it with my own sons. Layla's parents work very long hours, sometimes 6 days a week. When they are at home together, it's usually just in time to put Layla to bed if it's during the week. On the weekends, they only have Sundays to spend together but are usually too tired from working all week to do anything other than rest. Fortunately, we are practically neighbors so around mid-morning they come to our home where they pile up on the couch and fall asleep while Nana prepares a family meal and Layla and I slip away to my office so she can play videogames.

It was on a recent Sunday that everyone had gathered for our family time. We had just finished eating and Nana and the kids had all settled in the family room to watch movies. Layla and I slipped away to my office so she could show me her latest creations on Minecraft. I never fully understand the purpose of that game but I knew that my youngest son had played it for more than 10 years and Layla was now in her first year of playing it.

After getting her situated, I pulled up a chair next to her prepared to ask a litany of exaggerated, focused questions such as, "why did you choose to make the water blue?" or "how come everything is square?" My purpose of these obvious questions was to engage her in conversation so that in real life she would not hesitate to speak when spoken to. I wanted to quiz her on things she knew and get her comfortable speaking about those things so that it might be easier to speak about things she was unsure about. Besides, it was always fun to watch how she would twist her face, sometimes in exasperation and sometimes when thinking.

Layla surprised me with a few of her own questions. "Poppa, do you like this house? I built it just for you." I replied it was beautiful. "Where's the roof?" "Poppa, in Minecraft if we put the roof on the house then we can't see what's going on inside." I said, "But I like my privacy." and she quickly retorted, "Poppa, this isn't for real. You're really not gonna live in the house. It's just pretending." I said okay. I should've known that. She continued to work in the game way faster than I could comprehend and suddenly she stopped.

Layla faced me and said, "So Poppa, are you gonna tell me or not?" I replied, "Tell you what?" and she said, "Are you gonna tell me why you were crying the other day?" It was bad enough that my little innocent granddaughter saw me crying, to begin with, but for her to remember it 3 days later was striking. She stood up in the chair and leaned forward on my shoulder and held her little hands to my face and said, "It's okay to tell me why you were crying, Poppa. It will make you feel better"

Of course, sometimes there are things that children should never be told. This was one of those things. So I smiled and kissed her on the forehead and gave her a big hug. Then I told her that I had been going through some old photographs and had happened across some that reminded me of people I once knew. I told her my tears were happy tears and she shouldn't worry her little noggin.

Little Layla is too smart sometimes. That or she knows me too well. Layla gave me another hug and told me she wasn't worried but it wasn't polite to tell "stories". For those readers that don't understand, in the South, "telling stories" is the same as lying. I smiled and offered her another cookie. This stall tactic of mine didn't work this time. So I tried the truth. "Layla, there are some things that little girls shouldn't know about. This is one of those things. I know it's not fair but some things are just too complicated or difficult for a little one to understand."

Layla replied, "Are you dying Poppa?" Before I could answer, Layla jumped from her chair and ran to the living room. I could hear her screaming that "Poppa was dying!" Of course, that caused a stir and within seconds the entire family was standing in my office to check on me. Nana was the first to say something, "What on earth is going on?" Layla promptly answered, "Poppa was crying and then he lied to me and he said kids don't need to know everything and he's dying."

Now all eyes were on me. My mind was working overtime. How on earth did I ever get myself into this mess? How will I get myself out of this? I could just blurt everything out in front of everybody but it wouldn't make sense. I could plead ignorance but that would be unfair to Layla. I could lie or I could say nothing. Then it happened. I could not believe the timing. I was more shocked than everybody else standing there. I collapsed.

I don't remember much about what happened. My next clear thoughts are of being loaded into the back of an ambulance, followed by a very long ride to the hospital. A few days later, I had recovered enough to be allowed visitors. The doctors had found a blood clot. My third pulmonary embolism. I'm told I am a very lucky man. My wife found cause to ask me what I had been crying about when Layla saw me originally. I sighed and looked over at her. "Well, I had just hung up with my doctor. She told me she wanted me to come in for more tests. My leg wounds aren't healing and they've exhausted their treatment plans. I'm just tired honey."

Since July of 2015, I have been plagued with health problems too numerous to go into here. These problems have compounded leaving me unable to do the things I used to enjoy. Some days my mental health is better than others, but mostly I find myself yearning for healthier times. So whenever I hear that another treatment plan has been exhausted, it does take a toll on me. Sadly, Layla happened in on me and caught me filled with self-pity.

Why does this happen to people as they age? Why do they allow the culmination of all that's happened to them to dampen their spirits? There are as many answers to these questions as there are stars in the sky. My self-pity began when I lost the ability to mow my own yard. Then I lost my ability to earn a living followed by my ability to walk. Add in the side effects like weight gain and aging and it's easy to see how. But this isn't the way I imagined my life would end up.

Nana and I visited more, then she left. A couple of hours later, friends I hadn't seen in some time started filtering in. Men that I used to be close to but because of my self-imposed isolation, I had distanced myself from. One friend, Clint, is especially close. He's a little older than me, but we've chewed the same dirt as the saying goes. We've shared similar professional experiences and we have nearly identical likes and dislikes. After Clint left, I was alone for the rest of the evening and during this time, I pondered a lot of what we had discussed.

I realized that I had been given a wonderful opportunity. Yes, there are things I am no longer capable of doing, but there are things that I've always wanted to do that I now have time to do. For instance, I've always been an avid reader and I've kept journals since I was a little boy. Once, I even wrote an article for an industry magazine that was published. My point is that if I wanted to write, I had the time and skills to do so.

I had missed doing many things with my own children. Now that I was mostly homebound, my family depended on me for the things I could handle like picking up Layla from school and caring for her until her parents could retrieve her. This gave me roughly 3-4 hours a day and all day on Saturdays to focus 100% of my attention on her. There are other things I could do too. Although insignificant by most standards, I could do small things around the house that in total would add up to more free time for my wife.

I'm not sure how many days God will grace me with before he calls me home, but I don't plan to waste another one wallowing in self-pity. I used to be fond of a saying when I was a young man whenever I faced a crisis. I know it sounds cliche, but I would smile at my family and loudly proclaim, "I have broad enough shoulders to bear this and I will get us through it." Somewhere along the way, I forgot that.

As for Layla and me, I've decided to put our make-believe adventures to paper. I've told her about this and she wants to help me with the illustrations. I think this will be a grand idea and will make our summer very, very interesting.