My Family Changed My Life

On May 11th 2013, my grandma passed away due to pancreatic cancer. A little later that year on September 25th, my mom received a call from my aunt in Guam that my dad had passed away in his sleep. Then on May 14th 2014, my grandpa passed from complications of an allergic reaction to a medication. So within a year, I was left to deal with three immediate family deaths, one right after another. Losing such important figures in one’s life could leave someone depressed and unmotivated to move on with their own life and to rise above those challenges is difficult, yet possible. During this time of hardship, I grew discouraged and saddened, but over time I became motivated to set aside these struggles and make a change.

On a Sunday morning of March 15 1998, we woke up super early to the phone ringing on the other side was my dad. My grandmother answered the phone her face paled as she heard the words “mom I shot myself.” After talking to him for a bit my grandmother rushed out of her room to get my uncle up and they rushed to the house to see him up walking around with a hole in his stomach. Ambulance came to get him then rushed him to meet life force. He flat lined once on the helicopter. They were able to bring him back and stabilized him, and kept him stabled till they got to the hospital. They rushed him immediately into the OR, it was around 15 to 20 minutes into surgery that he had passed away, they were unable to bring him back due to the major loss of blood. My mom soon remarried and I gained two annoying step brothers and a step dad. One step brother didn’t bother me to bad, the other one poked and picked on me trying to pick fights. My step dad had episodes where he was violent and threw things at me and my mom. I withdrew more and more until a few of my friends literally grabbed me by my arm and told me to wake up that they were not going to let me push them away

After several weeks of my Grandmother passing, I came to realize she wasn’t coming back. The feeling of shock had left and now I felt intense amount of emotional suffering. The continuous feeling of pain and unanswered questions lingered about in my mind. I began to wonder how it could have happened and what people could have done differently. At this time, my whole family was grieving over the loss as well.

I would like you to imagine being in a country where your family has moved but you have never visited before. You do not speak the language. Every word you hear except from the small portion of your family is unfamiliar and confusing. There is no implicit definition for many of these syllables and even if there were, you would not know it, but this culture intrigues you. These people live a life like you have never seen.

I went to my living room to ask my mom a question, to see she wasn’t there. I asked my brother “where’s mom?” and he replied with “shes at the hospital, grandpa got burnt.” I would never have expected “grandpa got burnt” to be as severe as it was. I remember my mom coming home around two in the morning. I got up and out of bed to ask some questions. She said “I don’t wanna talk about it right now. Pack some stuff up, we’re going to Waterloo tomorrow.” So I listened and packed up a bag.

Before my mom sent me and my dad off to find help, she was on the phone with the roadside assistance which seemed like forever. All of a sudden we then realized the gas station wasn’t that far down the road, at least that is what we thought. We started to walk to the gas station, our foots sinking in the mud, the cold mud rises to our ankles. We immediately turn around knowing that this wasn’t the right decision. The gas station was longer than we thought, it was not even visible. Trudging back to the car we come to find my mom on speakerphone with the phone ringing. It goes straight to

Have you ever lost someone that you really admired? I did, my Uncle died from a heart failure, he had a heart attack. I was four years of age when he died, so I didn’t really understand what happened but now I do. My family and I traveled all the way from California to Mexicali (part of Mexico) to help my aunt, my Uncle’s wife, with the funeral money. It was a very rough time.

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

I remember it as if it happened yesterday. The strange sound of my mom's phone was loud and alarming. I decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. Soon after I went back to sleep, my mom came in my room. I sat up in my bed with my eyes half opened, and I remember the puzzled look on her face. It was frightening like if she had just been told something unexpected and upsetting. And at that exact moment, I knew exactly what she was going to say, and I froze in fear. She sat next to me and nervously mumbled ¨Your grandma passed away¨. I didn't know what to do and I didn't want to believe it. The exact same four words kept repeating over and over in my head and I felt like the whole world was spinning. Without even realizing, I then found myself bawling my eyes out. I had so many mixed emotions. I was heartbroken, I was angry and I was upset. My mom told me to get dressed since we were going to the hospital but I refused to go. I was upset and all I wanted to do was to be alone. My mom then left after having a talk with me about my grandma. I started to feel better and I was starting to accept that things happen for a reason, but it also started to feel like there was a huge hole in my

Have you ever had someone that was close to you die? I have had pets that I was close to die, but not someone I saw on weekly bases, until my great grandfather died. Death is something everyone experiences some time in their lifetime and people deal with it in many different ways. In the August of 2016, I was forced to learn how I was going to learn to deal with it.

February twenty-third 2010 was just a regular ordinary day. I was on my way to class on this cold February afternoon, when my phone rung. It was my cousin on the other end telling me to call my mom. I could not figure out what was wrong, so I quickly said okay and I hung up and called my mom. When my mom answered the phone I told her the message but I said I do not know what is wrong. My mom was at work and could not call right away, so I took the effort to call my cousin back to see what was going on. She told me that our uncle was in the hospital and that it did not look good. Starting to tear up I pull over in a fast food restaurant parking lot to listen to more to what my cousin had to say. She then tells me to tell my mom to get to

My mother had picked me up after school. On our way home, we passed by the school where both my uncle Beto worked. There was an ambulance there and we thought maybe a teacher had an accident. Shortly after we get a phone call from my aunt Ana, it turned out that my uncle suffered a heart attack while working. No one saw him while he collapsed, until moments later a teacher saw him laying on the floor, shaking, trying to breathe. My mom and I rushed to the school to see how my uncle was responding to the paramedics. My aunt was already there, we had to take her to the hospital because EMS wouldn’t let her drive while she was still in shock. It was hard to see how the paramedics were trying to help him

It was a bone chilling January night; my mom received a call at about 11:15 PM, a call that changed my life forever. My Aunt June was on the other line. She was crying so hard my mother could barely understand her. Through the sobbing my mom finally understood that Brian, my cousin, had been in a horrible accident and she didn’t know how bad it was. My mother jumped out of the bed after she hung up the phone. She screamed up the stairs at my sister and me; it was a nerve shrilling scream. I could hear fear in her voice. My mom was always yelling at us growing up if we forgot to do something. She would even get us out of bed to finish something that wasn’t done completely. This particular

My family has lived in Beijing for a long time. We experienced huge changes in China in the 20th century, especially within the economy. Because of the centralization of authority, China could gather the money in some specific way very soon during the developing period from 1980s to now. Chinese economy has changed a lot. The change is not just staying on the business level, which it surely have a lot of good effect to every common family.

It was Friday, July 15th, 2005, I woke up to my grandma telling me with happy tears in her eyes that my mom was in the hospital. I froze, I was shocked, I didn’t know what was going on. “What happened” I asked my grandma worried about my mom. She didn’t answer. Once again I asked “What happened”, I still got no answer. I’ve never been so worried in my life, I thought something bad happened to her.