Sunday morning. A strong Autumn breeze through a drafty window pulls the feathers of a hanging dream catcher toward the glass. Leaves blow past in a kaleidescope of the season's colors. The silence of the room disturbed only by the mechanical droning of machinery. The heat of the room is practically stifling.

A man walks into the room behind me. He is short, round, elderly and quiet.

"Are you a relative?" he asks.

"Yes, I am her grandson." I reply in barely a whisper.

The form on the bed in front of us is motionless except for the rhythmic but labored rising and falling of her chest.

The man extends a hand to me with an introduction, "I'm Father Paul from Immaculate Conception."

I shake his meaty hand, and return with, "I am grandson... son and father Paul from the Fanara family. Pleased to meet you..."

"Likewise. Always a pleasure to meet another Paul," he said with a smile. "We like to say a prayer with the patients on Sunday morning, if you would like to join in." He placed his clipboard with his list of patients on the bed-side tray table, and on top of the clipboard, he placed a small, golden box. He gave the sign of the cross as a blessing and began to recite the words of prayers that were so familiar to me in my youth. I stood quietly and reflected on the meaning people put behind these words.

He finished his prayers and put his hand on my arm.

"It is never easy, no matter how old or how sick... but I have hope she will be in a better place eventually."

"Yes... hope. Sometimes hoping is all we can do."

"Yes it is, my son. Yes it is."

He wished me a good day and quietly exited the room, leaving me to ponder many of the same things I have often thought upon; the conflict between my scientific, logical mind and my religious up-bringing. The finality of our mortality. Maybe this was easier when we were just animals, and death came to us via the teeth of a predator, the battles for territory and reproductive superiority, and the more rapid cycles of life.

Now we grow old and fade away in a bed, surrounded by photographs of our loved ones and refrigerator art taped to a pale green wall. The summation of our lives contained in a ten-by-ten room, with tables filled with jigsaw puzzles, half drank juice cups and in a silent din of perpetual exhaustion.

For the fortunate ones, relatives come and go. They are surrounded by the positive energy of children and the love of everyone that will miss them. They have the comfort of their family, coming, caring, sitting...

This is my grandmother. The matriarch of my father's family. The last of a generation.

I spent over a year with my other grandmother as her health quickly faded and she eventually passed away. My regrets lying in the fact that I couldn't do enough for her. I just couldn't do enough. I sat at her bedside as she took her final breaths and I still feel the crushing weight of loss when I think of her, wondering if I could have done more.

My grandfathers both passed when I was much younger, and both very suddenly. I didn't get a chance to say good-bye to either of them, but their deaths were no easier to reconcile.

As I continue to sit in silence, observing the surroundings of the room; walls covered with pictures of my children, my nieces and nephews and the children of my cousins. The entirety of life is overwhelming. I know what is in store for my children in this life; not specific events, but the life and cycles they will most likely live. How will they view me when it is my turn to pass? Will they remember the times I failed them, or will they rejoice in the moments that I championed them?

I fear that failure, more than anything else. I fear failing my children in this life.

And that doesn't mean I am hurt because I cannot buy them the latest Wii game, or the new Lego set they want. I fear the failure of not being able to be there for them, to teach them, to guide them and to help them grow into people that work as I have, toward making the world a better place.

Am I making the world a better place?

Have I already failed them?

Do I break their hearts more than I fill them with hope?

In the religious view, we hope for something better when we leave our mortal lives. In my view, I hope for something better for this life, and the lives that follow mine. This world is a paradise - heaven and all that it encompasses. It is also a hell, created by our own inability to see the paradise it can be and instead choose a path of selfishness and violence.

Hope.

Hope is something that helps us only when we create it. But hope on its own cannot help us.

I leaned over the bedside a kissed my grandmother on the forehead and whispered, "I love you. Sleep peacefully..."

As I walked to my car I heard an infant crying from a nearby house. Another traveler on this planet of heaven and hell, just starting the journey.

My hopes to all the children we bring into this world for a blessed and peaceful journey.