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Megan's Story

Megan (20) tells a story about the most important person in her life, her grandfather “Poppy”. She talks about a road trip to his log cabin in Vermont, the many stops on the way, and their special relationship.

00:00 / 04:41

The most important person in my life was my grandfather, Poppy. We were really close because he lived down the road from me growing up. I was over there all the time whenever my parents were working or needed to do something. My grammy, she would always have cinnamon raisin toast with butter ready for me anytime I was there with a glass of chocolate milk. And Poppy was so adventurous.

I didn't even realize how old he was. He would ride bikes with us and play basketball. It was always a really great time there. One time, I remember going over there. My parents didn't just drop me off.

They stayed. What happened was my and Poppy, they were going to move further north. Then they ended up moving to their dream log cabin in Vermont. And this was a really special place. It had a river, and it had a train too that would shake the house, but it was now 3 hours away.

Even then, he would drive to, like, to see me play and, like, my band performances and softball games and everything. In March of 2022, my grammy had passed away in a car accident. And so, because my puppy was always putting everybody before himself, he didn't know that he had cancer. And so, after that accident and my grammy's passing, he received his lung cancer diagnosis. And so, he ended up having to leave that Vermont log cabin, and he had to move in with my parents.

Now he was starting chemotherapy and would require a lot more assistance. I was away at school. And so, during this whole time when Poppy was receiving these treatments, I really wasn't there. It wasn't until the summer break when I was able to come home that I saw him again and we were able to spend so much time together. It was really like how it was when I was younger when he lived so close.

It was really awesome. We went fishing. We would just like old times, we would it was really great. But then he decided that he no longer wanted to continue with the chemotherapy because, like I said, it was taking a great toll on him and his body, and the risk wasn't worth it at that point. He made the decision to stop, and it was really sad.

But I just wanted to, like, enjoy every second with him because he is so special to me. During this summer, every weekend, he would ask me to take a ride up to Vermont to go visit his house, his log cabin, because he hadn't been up there since, you know, months prior, in August of 2022. We went on a big road trip to Vermont. It was really a road trip to remember. He sat in the passenger seat playing DJ.

He brought along all of his CDs and was, like, switching them every so often, but we made many stops on the way. We stopped at each and every one of his old houses. We stopped to at old friends' houses, old churches. We stopped at his old realtor's office and old restaurants that he would have great memories. So, this whole trip took us a really long time.

But whenever he would say, hey, Megan. Like, can we just stop at this one more place? I would say, yes. Of course. So, I would just make sure that I would say yes to everything because I knew that this was really special for him.

When we got to Vermont, we ate frozen meals that my mom prepared for us, and we slept in sleeping bags. And we just enjoyed the time in the moment. After that trip, in August, I had to go back to school in September, so it was really hard to leave. In November of 2022, I got a call from my parents saying that, Poppy had had a stroke and that I should probably come home. So, I did not take this lightly.

I had this gut feeling, and so I just drove home that night just to be safe. And, when I got home, he wasn't awake at that point. He wasn't talking or anything. But I got to see him one last time. And everybody that came over, all my family members, we all slept over at my house just to make sure that everybody was there.

And then the next morning, he took his final breath. It was Veteran’s Day. So, when the funeral home came, they put a flag over him because he was a veteran of the army, and so that was really special to everyone there. And then we saw him drive off, and we just stood there and watched him turn the last corner.

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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