Community Memorial: A Short Story

I was in school when I got a news flash about a shooting near a bus stop. At lunchtime, I opened up the story and it read, “Teen killed on way to lake park bus stop”. However, it wasn’t the headline that hit me but rather the first line of the article which mentioned that a Palm Beach Gardens high school teen, Claverle Joseph, was the one that was killed on his way to the bus stop. I didn’t know how to react. I just froze; I couldn’t process the emotions that were swirling through my mind. This was the first time in my life that I dealt with a death that was personal to me. My Grandparents had died when I was too young to recount any experiences with them. It was difficult to comprehend that I would never see a kid that I had gotten to know so well over the last three years ever again. My family and I did what we could for his family in there grieving state and donated to help raise money for his funeral. Although his death came as a surprise, I knew there was something wrong before the incident occurred because he did not come out for the travel team that last year. This was strange because he truly loved the team and playing basketball. Following my suspicion, a couple days after his death, I found out that there had been a series of incidents, including a shooting one week before his death in which he had been shot in the hand. His family stated for the news that they had been living in fear of their son’s life for a while. I wish I could have done more for him because whether he knew it or not he did so much for my growth as a person on and off the court. His life and this experience taught me to truly value one’s own life and to never take anything for granted because it could all be erased in an instant. His death helped me understand that I need to be as compassionate and empathetic for everyone I meet because you will never comprehend what adversities and difficulties they face in their

Has anyone ever thought about how roadside memorials can cause problems? I never thought about that until I have read “The Side of the Road Is No Place for a Memorial”. It is a story that talks about when accidents happened on the streets or highways, some people will display a memorial of the victim on the roadside. Those memorials should not be allowed due to a variety of reasons includes: they are illegal, it will remind people the nightmares that have happened, after a spell the memorials will became smudgy and it will be disrespectful to the victims, and most importantly, those memorials can be the cause of the accidents (“The Side” 201-203). After I have read it, I agree with the author’s ideas about displaying memorials on the roadside should be illegal, and they are potential traffic hazards themselves, because public places should not be used as personal, and those memorials can

Everyone deals with certain situations differently. In reality, we should all deal with situations the same. We should all believe in sanctification because it teaches a lesson and allows the mourning span to be dealt with easier. Let's say someone was dealing with a tragedy, the person may choose to forget the tragedy while their neighbor may choose to remember.

“Right this way,” the nurse ahead of me was prompting me to a brightly lit hall that was completely foreign to me. I couldn’t help but be terrified by the sights and sounds around me: people chattering, machines methodically beeping, gurneys rushing past. It was my first time in a hospital and my eyes frantically searched each room looking for any trace of my father. She stopped suddenly and I turned to the bed in front of me but I could not comprehend what I saw. At such a young age, I idolized my father; I had never seen him so vulnerable. Seeing him laying in a hospital bed unconscious, surrounded by wires and tubes was like witnessing Superman encounter kryptonite. My dad’s car accident not only made him a quadriplegic, but also crippled

I looked up and see Liam; he's so caring, all the time. I shake my head and look away. "I'm not feeling well."

One-thirty on a Thursday morning. I laid in bed worrying, after watching John rush to Main Street for a fire call. My head spun as the pager near my head continued to dispatch calls. “Be careful on the roof Watson, I can see light through,” Feltner’s voice echoed. Ambulance sirens boomed down a four-block stretch of Main Street. My body sprung from the bed and hurried out and down the block. My face began to fill with heat. Just then another page came through, “I know idiot, I put it there.” It was John’s voice. I felt relief and began to walk back down the sidewalk to our home. I heard a young girl screaming for her dog, hysterically. Finally, back in my house, I completely forgot that I had left the two girls upstairs. Thankfully,

And then, the day I had feared of most, finally arrived. We lost our father, the only figure I truly felt safe with. After months of mourning and painful transformations, our mother fell sick. In those terrible days, days during which I was locked in the basement most of the time, for my safety and even more: for the safety of my family, I was incapable of helping. To this, I regret even today.

In 2001, while I was a freshman in high school, a horrific tragedy occurred to our nation. As I sat in my seat in my drama class awaiting instructions from our teacher, the room was eerily silent. Before my teacher even had a moment to speak, the phone on the wall rang, everyone in our class knew something was going on because the phone never rang, in fact we all thought it was relic of the past. Staring intently as my teacher spoke to the person on the other line, I will never forget the array of emotions that reflected in her eyes. As she hung up the phone, she just stared at us all, not knowing what to think my mind began to contemplate what exactly was going on.

What do you do? What do you do as you walk down the thousands of rows of graves at Arlington National Cemetery? What do you do as your father pauses to gaze at his best friend’s grave? What do you do while you watch him break for the first time you can consciously remember? What do you do when you start to walk again and he pauses? What do you do? What do you do when he looks at the gravestone planted about six feet to the left and comments “I remember when she was blown up by an RPG?” And what do you do when as you get ready to leave and he returns to her grave just to watch the unchanging headstone? I watched in heartache, but also in envy. I did not envy the hurt. I did not envy the pain. I envied the brotherhood. I envied the pride. I

I told her what happened. She got there as soon as the ambulance got there. Somebody could’ve been dead by the time the ambulance got there. They came in and checked her. The paramedics and the emts told her she can’t be doing all that energetic exercise. They took her out the house on the stretcher into the ambulance van. My father told us to straighten up before we left to go with my auntie. When we got done she told us to go get some clothes. We did as we was told. When i got done, looked out the window and seen that the ambulance was still outside. I went outside to be nosey. They told my father he couldn't get in to check on my mother, so he was standing on the porch watching from a far distance. I was curious to what they was doing to

I asked my mom “what’s wrong,” she replied with a sorrowful “your Aunt Lisa is in trouble, we must leave now.” The worst part of all of this was my Aunt Lisa’s son was with us, Matthew. He did not know what to think or believe. No one knew the world would slowly start shattering beneath all of us that morning. We drove to her house, we saw ambulances and police cars driving by, that did not help our nerves at all. We finally arrived at her apartment, we never thought all of those emergency vehicles would be going there. My brother and I stay in the car since I was only eight and he was only eleven. My mom and cousin run into the apartment hoping to only find my Aunt had fallen and is unconscious, or she is passed out drunk, just let it be something that is not permanent. What they come to find is that my Aunt is laying on the floor, unconscious, but cold as ice. It was not from someone killing her, or us getting there too late. She had died twenty-four minutes before that phone

My brother kept on crying as I pulled him closer into my arms, listening to the sirens blasting the in distance. As the ambulance pulled up, I couldn’t move. My body was frozen holding my brother watching the paramedics pull my mom from the car. I tried to call out for her, but nothing came out. They worked quickly strapping her to a gurney and whisking her off into the distance. Through the fog, I watched the ambulance until I could no longer see the lights. It was then realized that my mother was gone, and we were all alone. As a policeman approached us he got down on one knee to be face to face with me.

As an American, who happens to be half Mexican, memorials are seen differently by many different people; their lust for recognition, or their respect to either a nation’s greatness; or to the protectors of that nation, are a couple central values. However, when creating monuments to memorialize either party, designers must consider many aspects. Such as: what is the purpose of the monument? What does it symbolise and mean? What are the costs, money wise, but also physically? What is the monument going to destroy or remove? What will every group of people think about the monument? These are questions which must be asked before the construction process proceeds. Certain monuments bring positivity to the nation by bringing to

“In the bed over there but, you two need to rest. You’ll be out in a few weeks,” The doctor added.

Do need to go home?" He asked, a look of genuine concern in his eyes.