My grandfather is dying.

They say six months if we’re lucky.

I have known death all my life though this is the first time I have had advanced notice. Maybe it’s because I am his namesake. For whatever reason, I am allotted borrowed time.

Time to ask him about every photo he has hanging on the refrigerator while he confuses my Mom and me because we look so much alike.

Time to ask him what it was like to grow up on a farm in Albany and know Rumrunners from the Minnesota 13.

Time to hear stories of shipping off with Elvis and what Dallas was like the day Kennedy died.

Time to have pancake breakfast together, laugh about the crazy, award-winning Christmas light displays he built in his Big Lake front yard, spot cardinals through the window, and talk of indoor thermometers fixations.

Time, right now, for us, is holding your breath and hoping for bittersweet luck.

Recently, after one of our visits, I was reminiscing when I passed a sunflower field. My mom had mentioned that a local man started Fish Sunflowers, growing patches of sunflowers around the north metro to add a bright spot in the otherwise difficult moment we all find ourselves in.

I was reminded of this and thought it might be his so I stopped. Serendipitously, it was. Time, right now, for all of us, is bittersweet luck.