Original Writing : My Friend

In the fall of 2012, my mother almost succumbed to her illness. I had just begun my freshman year of high school midst angry conversations between my parents and the threat of separation. It would seem as if they bickered about the most irrelevant things, almost as if they had no other reason to fight other than the fight itself. Those moments were excruciatingly lonely, my father worked until the dead of night and my mother would come home exhausted from treatment. I now know that there was no one who felt more unvalued than my mother. I wish I had the ability to iron away this blunder that destiny had fabricated, however foolish this desire is.

As soon as my eyes woke up to the bitter cold of the night and stars covered by black blanket of clouds, I knew that this was it. I had tried to prepare myself that day, but I was at school when it happened. The moment the intercom came over the classroom, “Hailey Wooldridge needs to come the office, her mom is here to check her out,” my heart stopped. I was able to make it to the office without losing my composure, but as soon as my eyes met my mom standing there with tears in hers I lost it. Right there standing in the school office, the food gates of heaven opened up in my eyes and I could not stop the rivers from flowing. My best friend since kindergarten had died. All the planning of moving in together when we went to college was down the drain. The late nights of watching horribly filmed scary movies was done. My heart was broken, and the pieces are still not taped together properly. Two days later was her funeral. Her mother had asked me to say a couple of words about her during the service, but the thought of standing next to her lifeless body talking about her and not to her made everything seem surreal. By the power of prayer and numerous amounts of tears, I stood up from my seat and walked lifelessly to the podium that viewed hundreds of people waiting to see what I had to say. I do not know how I got through that speech without hysterically crying, but somehow, I talked like I was having a conversation with Serra once again. In front of me, I

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.

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

“I don’t feel so well” Jan’s father had suddenly said one morning at breakfast. Her father, a World War II veteran, stood up and went to go lie down. The rest of the family continued with their day. Michael went to see how his father was. When he tried to wake him his father didn’t respond or make a sound. The 11 year old boy was the one who first knew that his father was gone. The memory of her father’s loss is vivid in Jan’s mind. It was a substantial shock after he had survived the horrors of World War II and then just passed away quietly at home one morning. Jan now understands how

As we slowly walked into the cold hallway on the third floor, I asked Daniel a few questions just for us to get acquainted. See, when we were supposed to meet our senior buddies, Daniel was attending a PATHS photography class, meaning that this was the first time we had met. I asked him about his freshman year as we looked for a place to sit down, and he told me he had actually transferred to Casco Bay from Deering in his Junior year. Suddenly I remembered my mom, a social worker at Deering, mention something about a former Deering student who was currently a senior at Casco Bay named Daniel. I asked him if he had known my mom and he told me that he did, and that it was funny how things happen. We started warming up to each other well

So this boy by the age of 14, named Tim, lived in the worst neighborhood. There were murders, kidnappings, and even robberies. Whenever Tim witnessed something so tragic as of these topics I have listed above, he started to bawl. He cried and cried and cried until his mother came in with some cookies and warm milk and fed it to him like he was still her little 1 year old. Tim was never allowed to go outside. For 1, there was this gang called, “Victorians”, and whenever someone tries to cross their path, they would rob them of their money and beat the victim up. Tim had once crossed their path, and they tried to rob Tim, but 1 of the members passed out because Tim had thrown a pipe at the member’s temple, which was located on the sides of his

My dad was what you’d call a “big, tough guy”. He never cried, and very seldom did he show much emotion at all. He took a minute to compose himself and got straight to the point. He told us that my cousin Mackenzie, my best friend ever since I was a baby, had been killed. She was at a different campground in Spooner, Wisconsin, when the storm broke off the top of a tree. Mackenzie was playing on a playground, just a little girl on the swings on what started out as just a normal Friday, when she heard the crack of that tree and started running. It fell on top of her and killed her on impact. The doctors said the hit cracked her skull and she died

Five days had passed this time since anyone had heard from my mother. I remember praying to God to protect her from harm and for me to find her. The next day she showed up, but not in the way we had hoped. One morning as I was getting ready for school my sophomore year in high school, my phone rang to the voice of my stepfather. My stepfather had told me he heard a call come over the dispatch scanner at his work and my mother’s name was mentioned. The sheriff had informed my stepfather that my mother had been involved in an accident. My stepfather asked me to go to the emergency room and see what condition my mother was in because he lived a half hour away from the hospital. When I arrived at the hospital I found my mother cut out of her clothes, covered in her own urine, massive amounts of blood all over her body, and lying lifeless on life support on the table. At this point, no one knew whether my mother would be okay. My mother had bleeding on the brain as well as a tear in her shoulder, a shattered face, and a chest tube draining fluid from her lung which had collapsed. All I could do was pray! My mother’s life was in God’s hands now. Three days later she woke

You never know when something might happen. An ordinary day can turn into a tragedy. November 8, 2016, was that kind of day. My dad was deer hunting so that afternoon it was just me and my mom.I was getting ready for gymnastics practice when my mom got a call. The caller ID read “Community Memorial”. I could hear the fear in my mom's voice as she picked up the phone. “H-hello?” she said. I waited nervously as my mom spoke to the hospital. Five minutes later she hung up the phone. “Your dad fell 13 feet out of his tree stand while he was hunting. He called 9-1-1 and is at Community Memorial right now” my mom said. At that point I didn’t know how serious the injuries were. “Is he ok?” I asked.

When those two weeks came down to an end jackie wanted to meet up with daniel and have a cup of coffee and talk. Once they had meted up at the coffee shop daniel asked” why have you brought me here , so that you can defend your boyfriend ?” jackkie ake daniel to please clam down and had told him why they met up” well the real reason why i called you is that i want to go the dance with you with no expectations and i won't ever leave you again”, then daniel in shock doesn't know what he heard “did you really mean that and if so what made you change your mind now” said daniel. Then jackie said “well at the time of our explosion i realized those words that you said that day in the conference room and it has touch the words you had said to me” . then once the day came to go the dance they had no liom cause daniel had canel it, jackie was ok coming in daniel’s Gtr r35 to the dance in downtown. Once after the arrival his friends had seen him with him at the dance with jackie and received that night three awards one for the soccer season and volleyball one , but the last one was the best one for daniel and that was his one and only love of his life that was

On a crisp early morning in November I walked to my first class of the day, a student in a dark green sweater ran past me, while I thought nothing of it what I did not know was that he had just stabbed four people. I turned around as two officers in plain clothes chased him and I looked on in confusion as the assailant was abruptly shot and killed. It is often easy to forget the everyday emotions and feelings of the people around us, even more so when these sensations are recounted on the evening news or a few sheets of paper on (of?) a patient's chart. In the weeks that followed that unfortunate event, I searched for some meaning, some way to move on or possibly grow. I found that I could appreciate the depth and significance of each person

It was a somewhat normal day as it started the constant birds chirping, the smell of pie that the Neighbors cooked, and the taste of morning breakfast. My younger brother Bon and I were off the school that morning. We don’t go to a normal school due to the war. We went to a knight school where they taught us how to use weapons. But what we didn’t know is that day would be the worst day of our lives. While we were gone our mother had been cleaning up the house, the house was hollow wood with no door and one window. It smelled like a farm and looked like a barn.

Daniel lives life with Bea and remains infatuated with learning about Julian’s life: meets Julian’s previous acquaintances

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