Personal Narrative: Wedaddy's Death

When I was 7 years old I attended a funeral for my great grandfather. He was 105, and had lived a full life. I wasn’t very close to him but seeing him in the casket was so odd and he looked like an alien. I was a curious child so I stood in front of the casket just observing the body and glancing around at the sadness that this room was filled with. My uncle joined me and asked me if I had said spoken to my great grandfather. I just looked up at him and said “No, he is dead”, since I was pretty certain dead people didn’t talk anymore. Well, he proceeded to tell me that if I asked him a question, my great grandfather would indeed respond. I didn’t ask since I was already scared at this point. My uncle did for me, he asked, “Grandpa, if you

My dad pulled me out of the chapel and told me it was okay to cry, that the only way to get through something was to accept what had happened, and that if that made me cry, it was okay. Everybody sees crying as a weakness but it is not. Crying is a coping method for me, and many other people that i know. After the ceremony, many people left and went home. As i collected myself, I watched the leaves fall off the trees and to the ground as we followed the hearse that carried my great grandmother inside of it. We got out of the car and walked to the burial, where everybody stood and said their last words about Nannie. I stood in between my dad and my grandma, she reached into her pocket and handed me the cross that i had given to my great grandmother. I set it down in her right hand, remembering her telling me how much she loved her cross and how she felt that it would always keep her safe.

I got the call. My father told me the news. It is insane how many things are taken for granted. We make plans for the day, and don't think about how those plans could possibly be taken in the blink of an eye. I never thought much about it myself, until being faced with undeniable truth. I honestly don’t believe people think about tragedy until faced with shocking news.

Mom is trying to tell us what happened but she's crying, then she makes out the words that she's having a double lung transplant. I start running around screaming because she has a disease that she has to be put on oxygen. Also she has to get new lungs.Most people die without ever getting the call to get new lungs but my mom did.I was full of joy and yet super scared I didn't know what to feel so I screamed . My whole family was crying tears of joy, especially me.

My mom kept saying "I have got to go see Fran. I need to see with my brother" My mom ran down stairs to get ready to go, I followed her and just stood there, still paralyzed. She hugged me and said that she loved me. I had never seen my mom so panicked. She went into the bathroom to take a shower and I could still hear her sobbing through the door. I was all by myself, now. I was standing in the middle of the family room as the words "He is dead" pierced my heart like daggers of ice. I was screaming OH, GOD NO, and started to cry uncontrollably. The realization that I would never see my uncle again struck me. After I got myself under control I went and packed my things to leave with my mother. As soon as we were done we were on the next flight to New Jersey.

When I was about 5 or 6 years-old, I lost one of my grandmothers to Lung Cancer. She was my best friend; we were always together no matter what. I remembered when she passed away. Everyone cried but me. They said that she was my angel and would always be with me. I believed them, but I also knew that it would finally grow on me, and I would have to realize that she was buried and never coming back.

Mom was gray, and gasping I hated to see her like that, yet I wanted her out of the pain that she was in too. I laid there with her for a while telling her “that if she had to go before anyone got there they would understand.” She just laid there with her eyes closed trying to relax I would think how long is she going to gasp? Dad finally got there and started talking to her; as he did she stopped gasping and said “look at the blue birds.” Dad looked at me and grandmother because the blinds to her room were closed and so were her eyes. Mom was almost at peace I think.

My mother was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer when I was in the seventh grade. School just ended and I remember running towards the playground, throwing down my backpack, eager to get on one of the swings. At the same time as I stepped foot on the playground I saw my brother getting out of the car and walking towards me. As I picked up my bag and got closer, I noticed tears in his eyes. I shifted my eyes towards the car and spotted my family all sitting anxiously waiting for me to get in. During the ride home, I kept asking my brother, two sisters and father what was wrong but they would not say a word till we got home. This is when I turned to ask my mother. Although she was smiling, telling me everything will be okay, I saw pain and sadness in her eyes.

I just kept going to visit him and I knew that one day there would be a time where I couldn’t anymore. One night in particular I was at the hospital with my family and friends and he wanted to go eat in the family room ( a room for all the families to eat together ) and I thought to myself this little boy is now 5 and has cancer so if he wants to go see his family and walk around that is just what we are about to do. So I get him out of bed very carefully to make sure all the cords and tubes stay intact and he was off. He had not gotten out of the bed in a week but all the sudden this

The childhood memory that vividly can't be erase out of my mind when my grandmother died from cancer and diabetes. It was sad day, as my family seemed clam once everything has been planned for my grandmother funeral. My aunt and uncles rushly have gotten ready, but no one seemed to have told the children to get ready.The memory of that day will forever hunt me for a while ,knowing that my grandmother loved me so much. I was not able to attend her funeral. While everyone seemed occupied. I took it upon myself to get dress, maybe they had forgotten about me with everything that was going on. I was one of my grandmother favorite grandchildren. My grandmother had a lot of grandchildren but I felt in my heart I was one of her favorites. I my mind I told myself that I needed to be there to say good bye to my grandmother and this was the day that I needed to be that big girl my grandmother told me to be. I decided to get creditable myself with what ever efforts to get dressed. Running to the laundry room looking for that floral dress my grandmother bought me, was like looking for a needle in a hay sack. Big black bags appeared all around me, of smelly mildew clothing. Family members implicitly walked around the house with not a care of the children. I impatiently waited and asked my aunt " have you seen my flower dress that my grandma bought me with flowers all over it?" I said

I groggily awoke to my mom's voice and smiled. We were pretty similar in resemblance, meaning we both had brown hair and brown eyes, but hers had a way of lighting up a room, a way of turning any day into the best. I loved my mom, she was the only family I had besides my brother, Johnny. My dad died a couple years ago, a man had shot him who then shot himself. I was glad that man died, my father deserved a great life and it was ruined by that bastard.

The news of my grandfather's death shook me to the core. I had always heard people describe loss, but feeling so utterly

On September 27, 2013, I received a text message from my older sister that our dad only had two to three weeks left with us. After battling prostate cancer for about three years – going in and out of the hospitals, back and forth from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, and having two catheters – the cancer spread into my dad’s liver and lungs. That day, we were picked up after school and went straight to the St. John’s hospital in Maplewood. Learning that day about the short time he had left, everyone was supposed to spend as much time as we could with him. Therefore, my family registered him for Hospice, so that he can stay home and still get all the help he needed, whenever he needed it. Not being able to do so because of school, we had to leave his side.

I clearly remember the day I found out about my granddad's passing. I was at school. It was a normal, joyful day. My dad was planning on picking me up, but instead my friend's mom picked me up. He would not tell me why, but I did not think much of it. I remember the car ride to my house. My friend's mom would not tell me why she was driving me home; all she told me was, "Just know, Ryan, that we will be here for you no matter

I didn 't understand what I had done to deserve this or what my grandma had done to deserve this. My heart was filled with anger. I stood still with a blank stare and nothing going through my head. Throughout the next few days we prepared for her funeral, which I was never really been prepared for. My sister and I had the job at the funeral of laying a rose on her casket before the funeral was over. When I walked up and touched the casket, I couldn 't help but burst into tears. I had never felt that much pain in my life up until then. My body was weak from all of the energy that had been sucked out of me from my grief. That was the first person I had ever lost and it hit me hard. That day was the second hardest day of my life.