Arielle Cohen

Ms. Wheeler
Honors English
27 November 2016
Disaster Struck
Get up Arielle! I hear my mothers soft voice say a couple feet away from my
face.
After I blinked open my eyes a couple of times, it took me a while to register her
and my brother sitting on my bed. There were tears streaming down my mothers face.
For the first time in my life, I noticed how old she looked with the wrinkles on her
forehead. I felt like I was a newborn, feeling the panic of a situation that I was just put
into. I could feel that a disaster had come, and I instantly knew what it was.
My Aunt Mindy had been diagnosed with cancer a year and a half before she died.
She had gotten an X-ray and on it, they had found a small black spot in one of her lungs.
It was a tumor, stage four. Back then, there was still hope that the chemotherapy would
work but after a few months, we lost it.
I hadnt known my Aunt that well, but our family would go up every few years to
Sacramento and visit them. Max and I would play with our cousins, Brayton, Taylor, and
Austin even though all of them had at least a 7-year age difference on us. Those were the
good days. The days when everyone had smiles on their faces, my Uncle Tom had the
grill going, and everyone laughed while they ate their barbeque chicken.
In the few weeks after she died, I realized that my family would never be the
same. Even though her death didnt cause a significant hole in my heart, it dug a ditch in
my mother and grandmothers hearts. Even when things felt like they were getting back
to normal, there would still be a slight twinge of sadness underlying our good moods.
And, because of this, I was always reminded of my Aunt Mindy and how my Uncle Tom
would never have a wife again, my cousins would never have a mother, my grandmother
without a daughter, my own mother without a sister, and me without my aunt. I thought
about this and realized that death and all that comes with it isnt for the dead, its for the
living.
A couple years went by and the hidden sadness slowly went away, save for a few
times when we would be reminded of it. We got through it together, always talking out
the hard times. Then, Friday, July 31, 2015 disaster struck again when my mother, her
face gushing with tears, came into my room that morning and told me that my cousin
Brayton had died the night before in a car crash.