Personal Narrative: A Moment To Change All Others

A Moment to Change All Others
How would I feel I someone I loved died? It is not a question that most people ask themselves frequently, but it is one that often comes up when they read or hear about a notable person that has passed or was killed, or even just a news story about a woman who lost her son. I had the unfortunate experience of discovering what that felt like firsthand.
When my uncle Kevin passed away on December the tenth, two thousand and fourteen, it was early in the morning, and I was supposed to be asleep. I had been sleeping soundly for most of the night, but I suddenly woke up and felt, sort of off. At the time I thought it strange, but I did not think anything of it until that day when I got home from school. Just like how I never realized the significance of the fact that my dad “went to work early” out of the blue that morning. But when my dad stopped the car at the top of our driveway right after I had commented that my cousins were over, I had a sick feeling of dread. He had the same look he always had when someone died; the same look he had when he told me my neighbor had been killed, and when my great grandmother had passed. This was the first time that a death had hit this close to home; it was the first one that came as such a shock.
I do not know how to describe how

I felt. I did not cry, not even as we pulled in front of our little blue Dutch colonial tucked away in the woods, the one that held the memories of my time with him like the pages of a scrapbook. The tears did not fall until the realization finally hit: I saw my family members all in tears. We spent the day remembering him and watching Hallmark Christmas movies, due to an ongoing joke my late uncle used to tell. He always said that the only part of a Hallmark movie you needed to watch were the last ten minutes because that was when everything happened. We watched those all week, not necessarily because we liked them, but they were just a happy memory we could associate with him.
The holidays have lost a lot of meaning without my uncle. Christmas that year was very solemn, coming mere weeks after his passing. For some reason, he was always who I associated as the life of the party. His smiles and wisecracks could light up a room like sunlight. Without him, the holidays feel almost vacant. The sensation continued as each holiday came around, and I do not believe that the holidays will ever feel the same. His death has affected the way we go about our lives, me especially. It totally changed my view on life.
That day, despite the sadness and heartbreak it brought, also led me to look at life in a different way.

Though it sounds quite morbid, Virginia Woolf describes my realization perfectly: “Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.” It took the death of my uncle to realize how short life could really be. Regardless of how cautious or secure you think you are, anything could change your life in an instant. His death taught me to enjoy the time I have. Every year we will remember him, and I will always remember the lesson he taught me, or at least his death did. Make each day worth living, because you will never know if there will be a

tomorrow.