Fighting fires.

He sleeps with a 457 under his companion pillow, well he told me he didn't anymore but I saw him showing it off with the rest of his guns. He still has the line of old telephones lining the wall against where the couch sits. When I was little I didn't realize they were only for show and thought my grandpa must be a very important person to have so many phones and I bet he got so many calls. Not only was he important for the many phones he had but he was a firefighter. I pictured him busting down doors and saving children as flames engulfed him, coming home smelling of smoke, taking off his boots and waiting for one of the lines to ring, to be a hero for another day. The knowledge of him that I severely lacked, I compensated with make believe stories. The one I do remember, and tell often, is when I was 6 or 7, going for a Fire Truck ride in an old vintage engine around the streets of Madison. The bells ringing, riding in the open summer air, like we were the only ones in a special day parade. He was always special to me growing up, but later in life I began to think less of him a hero and more just a retired grandfather.
This past summer I found out he had cancer and I prayed the hero would return. He was going through treatment and didn't want visitors. I was overseas and didn't know what was going on. The updates showed his progress and eventually he began to feel better. I never knew the extent of his sickness until a few days ago, when I finally got the chance to cross state lines to see him. He said he was in the hospital for four weeks. He had a PICC line. A colostomy. Radiation. Weeks and weeks of nausea, vomiting. Extreme weight loss. As a nurse, I can picture all of this, I know how sick he means when he says sick. At one point, he was almost sure he was going to die. But he said he came to terms at that point that he had lived a good life. He has done what he wanted to do. Had good memories. He did his best to overcome.
He is telling me this over coffee at a Greek diner down the street from my hotel. I look at him and see the hero, emerging from the fire.