Storm Ready

There are different levels of intensity when it comes to life’s struggles. Some are frustrations, some are obstacles and real life trials. Some of the pain the we experience is completely out of our control. And in my opinion, the scariest difficulties we face, are the ones we never could have prepared for; the ones we never expect. It was the season for storms. Early morning dew that would soon turn into ice, late afternoon sprinkles, and of course, the occasional blizzard that would last three weeks and cover my town with six feet of snow. With Today’s incredible technology, we can predict these storms hours, days, even weeks ahead of time. On the night of December 12, 2008, my family was hit with a storm that none of us could have prepared for. A few months earlier my grandpa was diagnosed with liver cancer. He laid quietly in his hospital bed in our front office room, along with his many oxygen tanks and fluid bags lining the walls. He watched as his view of the leaves falling, changed to the naked branches shake in the harsh cold wind, and then to the first now fall, never complaining once about the pain, or voicing whether he was scared or not. I watched as the cancer spread. It changed his tanned, leathery skin to a yellow, jondous color. It changed the little hair he had left, to almost nothing. It also changed his heart. The characteristics that made him unmistakably him, a passionate political advocate, a fiscally conservative farmer, a worrier, a care taker, transformed into a completely peaceful presence. He knew where he was going, and he was ready to get there. I never thought I would have to see nurses take my grandpa’s body away from us, or see the bereavement bouquets come to our door with cards stating “in loving memory...” But there it all was. The dreaded storm hit us that night, and my family was left simply stunned. As I struggled in finding a topic for this essay, I was doing some research and came across “Yale University’s, Tips on Writing your College Essay” in it read, “We do not want to hear about your grandparents dying, they all die eventually.” So I scratched that idea without hesitating. But, the more I thought about it, the more I came to this conclusion: my grandpa’s death prepared my family for the coming events that were never thought to