Laredo, Texas, smells the same as it did when I was a kid. It smells like sand. Not the beachy kind. The desert kind. It makes its way into homes in thin, grainy layers of earth.

Humidity from the Rio Grande sticks to my skin. Mexico is so close to my grandparents’ home that I could spit on this side of the border and it would reach the other. Sometimes, when the world quiets and the whole family sits outside with closed eyes, faces turned to the sky, I can hear the river.

The only benefit of coming to Laredo in November is the wind. It blows around us in spurts, trying to cool the heated air and force the vestiges of a long summer into submission. Often it doesn’t work, but the moment it touches your skin, you feel relief.

My grandfather sits next to me in his wheelchair, sucking in air, pursing his lips, and then giving a small sigh of relief when he’s able to exhale again. Like the rest of us, he’s worried each breath may be his last.

“Mi arbol, that one,” he murmurs as my cousin and I sit alongside him. We both already have sun-kissed skin even though we hide in the shade. The sun in Laredo is never forgiving. Even now, as it’s on its way out, just peeking over the shingled rooftops.

“Bolas, the flowers.” He speaks in broken phrases as he points at the trees. It’s harder for him each time he gets a word out.

“What kind of tree, Abuelo?” I ask as I look over at it. The bark looks as if it has been raked through, a sandy grey that twists and turns up to its green leaves. Little green ball-shaped buds hang from the end.

“No se,” he answers and chuckles. I smile at him. Since I was a child, he has had the tree and still has no idea what kind it is.

“Olive!” my dad calls out from the door of the house. “I looked it up once,” he said and  I grin, turning my attention back to my grandfather.

“Naranjo arbol,” grandfather says, semi-nodding his head toward the right-hand side. The orange tree, which I have never seen to have grown oranges, sits in another patch of sand and browned grass. “Tres meses, to grow,” my grandfather tells us.

“It took three months for it to grow like this?” I ask. He nods. My cousin and I can both see the irony in it, as he was just given three months left to live. For a moment, I’m mad at the tree. It is rooted firmly in the ground, still blooming each day. Green leaves with long buds hanging from each branch. The tree is healthy, vibrant, and, more importantly, alive.

My grandfather sits in his chair, unable to even hold his beer without assistance. I have to keep his baby beer in my hands, and when he wants more, he clicks his teeth together for me to pour more into his mouth. He’s mostly just skin and bones as cancer eats away at him.

My father was the one to tell him that he was dying. His only response? “Quiero fumar.” He quit smoking three years before, when they told him it would kill him one day. They weren’t wrong. But at this point, there wasn’t much sense in telling a dying man he couldn’t live out his days the way he wanted. The irony was, that when he wanted to smoke, we had to remove his oxygen tubes from his nose and start the cigarette ourselves. He couldn’t quite hold the lighter and get the cigarette started at the same time. He always smelled of Winstons long after he had stopped smoking. The smell stuck to his flannel shirts and jeans. As a child, I would wrap my arms around him as far as I could, never being able to touch my fingertips together and inhale deeply. It was a comfort knowing he was there. Now, I could wrap my arms around him nearly twice.

We sit outside a bit longer. The dry air becomes cooler and the sun shrinks behind the sand-colored homes. It’s time to go inside. Somehow, as we wheel him back in, I know it will be the last time we sit outside together and enjoy the time we have.

The next day we say our goodbyes, and my grandfather’s hand clasps mine. Even now, I can still feel the calloused fingers against my palm. His eyes are cloudy — misted like Laredo on rainy mornings. My dad reassures him we will be back in less than a month to see him.  My grandfather nods his head, but his eyes don’t rise to meet my father’s. I know he doesn’t want to promise he will see him again. My grandfather is strong-willed, if nothing else. He knows as well as I do that he wants to see my grandmother again. She left us six years ago.

Less than forty-eight hours later, the phone blares through my parents’ home at five in the morning. The birds haven’t even started chirping yet. I already know.

I run upstairs to see my mother nodding her head and whispering into the phone. “Ricardo…” she calls to my dad, then pauses a moment. “Your father passed away, honey.”

A deep sigh. “Ok,” was all he said, and it sits heavily on my shoulders. My mom hugs me, and I walk down to the living room, tears falling and burning my cheeks. I hear my dad come downstairs. He starts the coffee pot and brings me a cup.

We sit together as my father makes calls to tell the family what has happened, and I sit in silence, listening to the muffled condolences from each person on the phone. The coffee burns the tip of my tongue, but I keep drinking anyway, thinking back to when my grandfather would visit us. Some days, I would try to get up before the rest of the house and quietly walk into the kitchen where I knew my grandfather would be sitting. He’d stare out the bay window, a cup of coffee in front of him on the table, smokes in the front pocket of his flannel shirt, with a newspaper in his hands. We never spoke much, but I would grab another cup and meet him there.

“Good morning, Mija,” he would greet me with a smile and go back to his paper. I would smile back and sit with him. Together we’d wait for the sun to wake up and greet us.

The phone calls stop, and my dad leans into his recliner. I can see the lines on his face a little more clearly.  My father — my rock, my hero — is tired. His parents are back together on the other side of the veil, leaving him here to take care of us until he meets them again.

“Abuelo would still have been up before us,” I say jokingly, and he smiles.

“Yea, he would have,” my dad responds. He takes a sip of his coffee as we both wait for the sun to wake up and greet us.

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