Life is Precious--Julian

 

The chance of being born is one in four hundred trillion. To Put that in perspective, being struck by lightning is one in five hundred thousand, so it is easy to say you are very lucky to be born and it could be taken away at any moment in time. In June/July of 2018, I remember like it was yesterday. I had just come out of soccer practice on a cold summer night, so cold you could smell the moist pavement. It seemed like a normal night until I got into the car with my mom. I could sense the uneasy energy in the car. My mom had just received a call from her sister saying my grandmother was crying and could not say much. We rushed to the hospital because my grandfather was just getting a normal check up only to find out my whole moms side of my family was at the hospital as well and I was starting to panic, i could almost feel an anvil being dropped on my back when i found out the news that the doctors had found cancer all over his colon area. About a week later, it was to be presumed at stage 4 colon cancer. My face felt like all the blood had rushed away and straight to my heart and made it pump 4 times as fast and my stomach was turning into double knots by the second. My face looked as if I had seen a ghost. That day was so faint to me because of how shocked I was. The doctors made it a priority to produce a surgery but when they tried there was too much cancer and there was nothing they could do about it but just to put him in chemotherapy. As the days went on they felt like seconds with the time he had left, they gave him one month but another month would go on. One day while we were all in the hospital visiting him, my father had come in to visit, although my parents are divorced, my grandfather was so happy and alive to see my dad, it was the most talking I had seen my grandfather done in weeks. It really sparked joy in my heart to see him talking as much as he was hurting. They talked about the dodgers and it felt as if my grandfather was never sick. On October 17 of 2018, I had just gotten out of school, and that whole day seemed off to me. After school my dad and step mom took me to eat at Buffalo wild wings and they also seemed off. My dad then started driving me to my moms after we finished eating and that's when I got the call from my mom that my grandfather had passed. Everything went into a blur, and I felt like I was falling in a bottomless pit. Time moved slower than ever, and my legs felt so weak and vulnerable like noodles. To this day I do everything in my power to do what I told him when I was in the sixth grade and that is to eventually attend Cal State fullerton.