When words aren't enough

I haven't felt like writing much lately.
The passion behind the outpouring of words hasn't been with me. I haven't wanted to allow my soul to speak through my words for fear of what it will say. The thoughts that follow me throughout my day and into my dreams range from confusing to horrifying, mundane to comical. I need to let them out of my head and free myself of them, but I am afraid to.

My grandfather is dying.
Not in the sense in which all of us are dying. He is sick and this disease is slowly eating at his body and his spirit.
In the beginning, he was brave and handled every little setback with a smile. I noticed as the cancer began to eat away at the edges of his vanity, and he would brush it off, but I saw traces of it there. He was seventy when diagnosed, but you never would have known it. That may sound old, but for my grandparents, age is truly just a number. They were, up until this illness, traveling frequently, parasailing and hiking through remote tropical forests; walking each morning and night together, lifting weights and swimming laps in their backyard pool. Seventy was no setback. I have seen it, in his eyes, which until of late have still held the sparkle of youth. When he struggles to stand, and someone reaches to help him, I see the wound to his pride as though it were visceral, made of flesh and bone as he is.
My grandmother was alone for so long. She worked, always, two or three jobs. She struggled to support the four children and husband she had waiting at home. That, of course, was when my grandfather was at home, and he wasn’t always. He would disappear for weeks on end. When her children were grown and he disappeared again she decided it would be the last time, quietly gathering his things and placing them neatly in boxes outside the front door, its sparkling new lock guarding her from changing her mind. She was alone even before this, but after she was really alone. I would visit, and I would sleep in her bed, it’s white sheets always crisp and cool, the down mattress cover and comforter crinkling contentedly with my weight. I remember once, pulling back the heavy white pillow to find the shock of black metal shining against so much snowy white. The innocence of the bedding affronted by the violence of her handgun. But she was alone, and how could anyone blame her. And this was before Len.
They met when they worked together at Angel Stadium, eloped in Hawaii in matching Hawaiian shirts just to avoid “making a fuss” for everyone by marrying here. They worked together, from the Stadium, to the Pond, to the Grove, each place with matching shifts, matching smiles, holding hands. They were always on the go, and had just planned a trip they had each waited a lifetime to take. They had booked flights to Italy. Then my grandfather decided to see the doctor; he was feeling run-down. He thought most likely that he had a virus, and they ran some tests to find out. It was bone cancer.
The chemotherapy rendered him tired and nauseated. He became diabetic from the medication. They tried, time and time again to perform the bone marrow transplant he needed, but he was never well enough, and then developed pneumonia. They sent him home. We kept smiling, bolstered by his incredible confidence. Somewhere deep inside my heart told me that it was his confidence and positivism that kept him alive.
Now it is spring, and three years have passed. The world is in bloom with new life. The very air we breathe thick with the scent of flowers, their freshly unfurled petals coloring every empty surface. I drive to my grandparents’ house to pick them up and drive them to Easter. My grandfather is not ready to go, as it turns out, he is not going, in dress pants and a pajama shirt that hangs from his frame. He has lost another 45, 50 pounds. It’s difficult to keep track now. It’s like watching a tragedy in slow motion. My grandmother, so long alone before, is now preparing herself to be without him. Trips have been canceled. The kitchen table, so long before covered in travel magazines and newspapers, now littered with pill bottles, means for counting and sorting and administering the medication.
“He’s finally given up hope” she tells me in the car, fearing that his anxiety over the impending test results he will not receive for another week yet have broken him. He braces himself for the worst, fearing that every pain and sensation is a bad omen. Rather than smiling through the worst of the pain, with hope in his heart for recovery, the barrage of setbacks and bad news have sunken to the deepest levels of his psyche, and he now tries to steady his heart for the devastating news he feels is imminent.

I haven’t dealt with it. How can I? I feel that my optimism requires me to believe wholeheartedly that he will be just fine. But he’s not. He’s not fine now. What do I expect?

What do I do?