I have a great grandfather who died running. Between one step and the next, his heart went from pounding in his chest to a silent stillness. His heart gave up on him before he was quite ready for it, he never got a chance to finish his run.
   

My grandpa is strong, but not strong enough anymore. He’s a mountain climber who has trouble lifting his feet off the ground. He’s a hiker who can’t feel his toes well enough to keep from falling. He used to run up mountains far into October, until the first snow. Now, he shuffles down the road, on good days. It’s slow, and his feet drag, and he’s tired.

His heart isn’t perfect. It has let him down before, but it still beats after surgery and too many pills. I think he wishes his heart hadn’t done him so well. I think he wishes it would quit on him, maybe in the middle of a slow, dragging, walk. Last winter, he lay down in a snowbank and waited to die, but my grandma found him too soon. Grandma doesn’t understand depression. She doesn’t know why someone would be sad, when there’s so much beauty in the world. She’s working on that, maybe.
   

They used to love each other with a force, unbreakable and unstoppable. Her parents didn’t want her to marry an atheist, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. They were married by a Justice of the Peace and the witnesses were his wife and his dog because they didn’t want to take the time to invite anyone else. There must still be something left of that. They’re still together, anyways, after more than fifty years.
   

My grandpa’s not doing too great. He hurts a lot. Grandma makes sure he eats enough kale and takes all his medicine and gets out of bed in the morning. I don’t know if they love each other the same way they used to, but there’s some kind of love between them.
   

Grandpa quit on his heart before it quit on him. He’s ready to let go but we haven’t stopped pushing the air into his lungs yet. Grandma still makes him dinner every night. He says she’ll probably burn it, and she doesn’t, and he eats. “Thanks, Babe.”
   

There’s still something here. A heartbeat.