Everything is perfectly fine, everything is great, then one day it all comes crashing down and shattered pieces are left. My life would never be the same but I guess change is for the best and it forced me to become the person I am today. It’s rough to be the oldest child, especially when your mom is diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and you have 3 younger sisters that look to you for comfort when their mom can’t be there. When the cancer is spread throughout your moms body doctors can’t just get rid of it no matter how badly you wish they could. Rounds of chemotherapy only slow it down, yet it’s still there a lurking monster waiting to reappear at any given moment. Nothing can even begin to describe the fear I felt, and still have to deal with today, but something happened where I could be there for others. What would Sheridan think, or what would 8 year old Lane think if they saw me cry? I had to be Strong not only for me, but for my other family members. The nightmare began on a summer day when I was about to go into 5th grade. I was just a normal kid watching the television. I hear...
Of course, as any other young girl, I didn’t really know what real pain was. I mean the type of pain when losing someone, more specifically, having someone taken away from you. I remember everything like it had just happened this morning. Long story short, I had my dad pulled away from my arms due to immigration issues. I wasn’t easy going through that. I had to go to school with a smile on my face and let no one know what had just happened. Up to this day, I get choked up just thinking about it. It wasn’t easy then, and it's still not easy today. With all the pain going around, I never stopped to realize I wasn’t the only one who had experienced that. As I got older, I became aware that many of my fellow classmates had the same thing done to them, sometimes even worse.
Isn’t it overwhelming to consider the fact that approximately one in eight deaths in the world are due to cancer? To make this more comprehensible, the number of deaths caused by cancer is greater than caused by AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. Along with the idea that this disease does not have a definite cure is a mind-staggering concept to grasp. If not caught in time, cancer means guaranteed death. These types of thoughts were floating around my head when my mother had told me that my father had mouth cancer.
t was a sunny Friday morning when the news arrived. The perfect weather was an ironic slap to the face as we endured one of the worst days of our lives. A shrill ring from the phone grabbed the attention of all of us. The image of my mother’s face is burned into my memory forever. As she hung up the phone, I already knew the news was not what we had expected. She burst into tears as my father held her, tears falling from his own eyes. That day she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, a form of breast cancer. That day was her 50th birthday.
Seventeen years ago, I came bounding into a world of love and laughter. I was the first child, the first grandchild, the first niece, and the primary focus of my entire extended family. Although they were not married, my parents were young and energetic and had every good intention for their new baby girl. I grew up with opportunities for intellectual and spiritual growth, secure in the knowledge that I was loved, free from fear, and confident that my world was close to perfect. And I was the center of a world that had meaning only in terms of its effect on me-- what I could see from a height of three feet and what I could comprehend with the intellect and emotions of a child. This state of innocence persisted through my early teens, but changed dramatically in the spring of my sophomore year of high school. My beloved father was dying of AIDS.
Cancer is a deadly disease that millions of people die from a year. Many loved ones are killed with little to no warning affecting families across our world. My family happened to be one that was affected by this atrocious disease. This event changed the way my family members and I viewed cancer.
The living room was dark and the only thing you could see was the brightness of the TV. Also, I could still hear many people talking from down stairs, fire truck siren going off, and the city lights that were still shining bright. At the age of seven, on a cold Friday night in Brooklyn; my mom, cousin, and I started watching some scary movies since it was around Halloween. There was this movie called “Child’s Play” and as a child, I didn’t like the movie at all due to the fact that there was an ugly doll that was moving and killing people. During, that weekend it was showing marathons all weekend long since it was the Halloween weekend. The bed was pulled out with all the warm blankets and snacks besides us waiting for the move to start.
The incident in which death occurs can play a crucial part in how the individual overcomes it. In some cases death can leave an individual traumatized and basically mentally paralyzed for a time being after the incident. The way of overcoming death in these individuals would be to accept it. Accepting death is a positive way of coping. Accepting death consist of understanding that death is a part of life, treasuring the moments and growing from the impact that individual had. However, this may become difficult based on how the incident occurs. The story, “My Mother’s Sin” is a prime example of overcoming death. In this story death plays a critical component. However, it is not death who defines a person; it is how the person fights back after death. The mother, Despinio, in this story had a tough time overcoming death. Despinio never accepted fault in her actions. She had smothered her baby
It was a chilly morning in August and my phone kept buzzing in my pocket with news I wish I could change. I was sitting in the parking lot with one of my friends, talking, before we had to go to work. I grabbed my phone to figure out why it was going crazy. It was my mother: “Terrie is not doing very well; I wanted you to know. I am sorry; She’s nearing the end.” I broke down into tears while my friend witnessed it.
Borrowing from Friedrich Nietzsche's statement, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger," Kelly Clarkson unleashes an up-tempo empowerment anthem for recovering from bad relationships. Everyone endures a bad breakup at some point in their life, and a pick me up song like "Stronger," written by Jorgen Elofsson, David Gamson, and Ali Tamposi helps listeners pick up the pieces of a broken heart and move on to bigger and better things. Breakups can be extremely difficult, and they can be amicable; no matter what, no one really wants to go through them. The loss of a relationship can bring on intense heartache and stress. After being down for some time, it takes trying to look for the positives of the loneliness, instead of sadness and grief. When the positives are found, the feelings of happiness will overcome.
"Nightmares." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness. Sussex Publishers, LLC, 13 May 2010. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
There were many days that passed when I felt as though I wasn’t going to make it and I felt as though I didn’t deserve to be alive, but who is really ready to take care of a child anyhow? I wasn’t. Then one day I woke up and realized that my life would go on, and that I just had to do the best I could and learn from my mistakes.
Throughout life most people would admit to having at least one nightmare. However,
My stomach weakens with a thought that something is wrong, what would be the answer I could have never been ready for. I call my best friend late one night, for some reason she is the only person’s voice I wanted to hear, the only person who I wanted to tell me that everything will be okay. She answer’s the phone and tells me she loves me, as I hear the tears leak through, I ask her what is wrong. The flood gates open with only the horrid words “I can’t do this anymore”. My heart races as I tell her that I am on my way, what I was about to see will never leave my thoughts.
It was June 6, 2011. I remember taking my mother to the County Hospital’s emergency room. She seemed extremely exhausted; her eyes were half-closed and yellow, and she placed her elbow on the armchair, resting her head on her palm. I remember it was crowded and the wait was long, so she wanted to leave. I was the only one there with her, but I did not allow her to convince me to take her home. I told her in Spanish, “Mom, let’s wait so that we can get this over with and know what’s going on with you. You’ll see everything is okay, and we’ll go home later on.” I wish then and now that would have been the case. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with colon cancer that had spread to many parts of her body including her lungs and kidneys. The doctor said to me not considering that I was a minor and my mother’s daughter, “Her disease is very advanced and we don’t think she will live longer than a year.” With this devastating news, I did not know what to do. I thought to myself that perhaps I should cry, or try to forget and take care of her as best I could and make her laugh to ease her pain.