Brittany A Bologna
Professor Smith
SOSC 314
23 September 2014
Grief and Illness

Caner is one of the one of the deadliest illnesses that ends thousands of family’s every year. In todays medically advanced world there is still no cure for caner, though everyday thousands of doctors, chemists, and biologists try to seek a solution. On average throughout a person’s life he or she will probably encounter someone dying of cancer. This is a tragic, horrifying, and unfair illness no one should ever have to go through. Unfortunately I had to watch two beloved people perish due to this illness. This day still plays a vivid picture in my head all the time, on September 17th 2001 two days after my birthday my best friend Lindsay tried to explain to me her mother Dana was diagnosed with stage three bone cancer and had two months to live. At this time in my life I had no concept of what it meant to die or what cancer even was. My mom tried explaining it as how her bones are no longer good and cant support her any more, so she has to sleep forever. My level of education when I was 6 or 7 was very minimal, so I believed anything that I heard. So in my mind I just thought my best friends mom was just going to sleep a long time and would wake up. However, as weeks went by I started noticing that she wasn’t just taking normal naps. My mother and I went to the hospital almost everyday to see Dana and my best friend, but along with my visits came unwanted, unpleasing, and horrifying knowledge; I started to become so aware of what happens during cancer. Throughout the two months of visiting the hospital I remember seeing a change in Dana, and not a good one. As questions started forming in my head like why is her hair gone? Why is she in pain? Why is she so swollen and bruised? What happens after two months? My mom enlightened me somewhat upon the truth. She told me the medication and treatment the doctors gave Dana had negative side effects but was beneficial to her in the long run. After, the talk with my mom I still didn’t know what it meant to die, but as I observed everyone’s emotions, sleeping didn’t sound so peaceful as I thought. On December 2nd 2001, was my first encounter with the grief of death. As I went to a funeral confused and unsure to be upset, everything around my family and friends took a depressing turn. At the funeral Lindsay told me that her mom was now gone and is permanently asleep. Concluding with several conversations with adults and m friends I still didn’t know what “death” meant. But I knew I would never see Dana again so I became accustom to the emotions everyone was feeling and became sad. Two years later around October 2003, I started to notice a depression change in my family’s attitude. When I first asked my dad what was wrong, he said that my grandfather was diagnosed with stage two-lung cancer and had a year to live. For a girl who was only in fourth I encountered one to many “deaths” and didn’t know how I felt about going through this whole cancer phase again, especially with someone who was much closer in my heart. Every week my family and I went up and visited him at home and for the most of his treatment he started getting better and I thought things were looking up. Until the Summer of 2004, when he had a sudden heart attack then was admitted to the hospital for a week. The hospital kept him for about a month, when they started to realize his cancer spread and his organs were slowly shutting down. Obviously my mom and dad didn’t just say your grandpa is going to die, as I still was confused about what this meant, so they just told me he wasn’t doing well and was sick. Yet every time that we visited him in the hospital from the time of August to October 2004 I started to notice a change in him, which wasn’t the same change Dana had with cancer. My once live, upbeat, loud, macho Italian Grandfather I use to know, become a frail, monotone, body that showed little emotion lying in a bed. From that