Personal Narrative: My Uncle Mike's Death

As I experience the death of my grandpa, Donald Hunger, my mind goes back to this past winter when my Great Uncle Mike died. It started out as a normal Saturday. I had practice that morning for basketball practice. I went home and took a shower after practice and then my girlfriend at the time came over to help me study for an Anatomy test that I had on Monday. We were sitting in the front room. The room was so hot that it felt like a sauna due to the black iron wood stove in the room. She would quiz me about the different parts of the digestive system. She would point at the picture, and I would have to tell her what part it was. This went on for a while, until the my world was turned upside down. My mom and dad slowly walk into the room.

Dad is standing their with a look that just sucks the life out of me. His arm is around my mom who is sobbing softly.
Mom sobbingly tells me, “Uncle Mike just went brain dead. He had called a friend to take him to the hospital, but by the time the friend got there he was unconscious. His friend then called 911 and a little while later the ambulance arrived. They worked on him the entire way to the hospital. Eventually, he was declared brain dead. The family made the decision to cut his life support. The room was as silent as a morgue and when the plugged was pulled the only thing you could hear was the heavy breathing of the family members, and the eery beating of the vitals machine as it flat lined.”
I try to stay strong and act like I am okay. I was shattered and broken like the Berlin Wall when it came down. I bawled like a newborn baby. My girlfriend pulled my head to her chest. I shook all over and was numb to everything around me. My girlfriend smelled like fresh flowers and was a calming factor that not even meditation could have matched. It seemed like an eternity, but in reality it was just a small drop in the pond that is time. After gathering my composure, events started to progress like a movie being fast forwarded .
We took my girlfriend home and then went to my grandmothers.

Once, there the family deliberated on when and where to do the visitation and funeral. Then the only problem was who would be the pallbearers? That was a rough affair for the family. In the end, I as well as my father, and brother were some of the pallbearers for Uncle Mike’s casket. The days following all of this are a haze. One instant I had a few days, and then the next it was time for the visitation. We were there and for an eternity. We met so many people that we had never met before. It was similar to the first day of middle school. We talked, and talked, and talked eventually everyone trickled out, and we all took one last look for the night and went home. Then the next day came in a blink of an eye. I woke up and felt this knot in my stomach. We ate breakfast and then left for the funeral. When we arrived there was a little service inside due to the weather being as cold as Antarctica outside. It was a heartwarming service, and then it came time to carry the casket. We all lined up around the casket all six of us. I was not the smallest. I was somewhere in-between strength wise. My brother and father were the strongest and they were put on separate sides. Then my uncle, and his son were on the same side as my brother. I was on the same side as my dad with another one of my

uncles.
Dad said, “On the count of three we will lift. One….Two…..Three lift!”
Bryant, “Make sure to watch your step as we go out. There is still some ice out there.”
The casket weighed down more on me than any of the weights that I have lifted over the years. It felt like for that moment in time I was Atlas, and I was bearing the weight of the world on my shoulders. Once, we got the casket into the hearse we all drove to the graveyard in procession. Once there, we sloshed through the snow to get the casket from the hearse. Then we took it to the tiny canopy that covered the grave site. It was all royal looking and from a distance reminded me of a commanders tent in the field during medieval times. Then the pastor did a small service at the site and from there we all went to eat.
The church that the dinner was hosted as was his mother’s church. The meal was a simple affair including: soups, salad, meat trays, and cookies. The key thing though was the happiness that we were finding. It may have a time of grieving, but we all found reasons to laugh.
Mawmaw tells us, “Mike would be telling us to pull our glum faces up and start smiling. That is the way he would have wanted it.”
“He would probably tell me how big my axe handle and a half is looking today,” Mom reminds us.
“Do you kids remember when he told you that the scar he had was from getting shot?” Dad says.
“No,” we all replied.
Dad said, “Well, he had just had surgery, and you all were looking at the scar. Katie asked what had happened. Him being as ornery that he was, told you all that he had gotten shot in a bcd alley in Lawrenceburg.”
“Oh wow, I can’t believe that I fell for that,” I told.
We then ate and went home feeling lighter in our hearts. In the end, death may be final but the memories of that person will live on forever. I will always treasure the memories that I have with him. I will take these experiences and use them as motivation in my life. For instance, the time when Mike sat on mom’s lap and refused to get up. There was also all the stories that were told of him accidentally cutting into a present when he cut it open with his pigsticker. All these memories comfort me in the fact that I will never forget my Great-Uncle Mike. Now today I face this same challenge once again with the death of my grandpa. I will feel the same emotions, but they will be heavier with the weight of all the plethora of memories that I have with him. Being my senior year makes it worse, but I will make it through it. I will just finish this year for him. I know that all of the memories that have been made over the years will allow me to never forget him.