A Shattered Heart

I can still remember the phone call that shattered my world when I was younger. One

minute I was watching tv with my family and the next there was a high-pitched scream. The

whirlwind that came next wouldn’t stop for a very long time.

The rest of us in the house didn’t know what was going on but we could hear voices on

the phone. After my mother had gotten off the phone she told us that our uncle had passed away

from a heart attack. As soon as the words came out of her mouthThe pain and suffering didn’t

stop there though because we now had to approach my grandmother's house and deliver the

news, which is one of the deepest pains you will ever hear. The snow fell on our heads as we got

out of the car, getting hit with the cold air. There was still a sense of peace that we would soon

break.

Soon others showed up to the house and although all the kids were in the basement we

knew the horrible news had been given when we heard the piercing and screeching screams of

our grandparents. I can still hear the cries and screams coming from different family members all

over my grandmother’s house. I remember trying to comfort my grandmother at some point

throughout the night, wiping the tears off of her smooth skin while her breath was shaky. Seeing

the color leave her face when it finally hit her, she was going to have to bury her children. With

the adults discussing going to the hospital a conversation in the other room could be heard, “ I

think the kids should stay here while we all go to the hospital.” to which everyone agreed with

this adding onto the sense of not being able to grieve properly.

Any death of a family will hit hard but when it is a sudden death it's even worse, thinking

of how life was before with my uncle,seeing him a week before he passed. It seemed like time

never stopped throughout the process, and there was no time for me to step aside and grieve the
loss so instead I focused on how everyone else felt. Since the death was so sudden there was so

much shock and I was unable to show any emotion (death and grief, 2021) This is one of the

many ways that a teen’s mental health can be affected. Even the funeral seems like such a blur

with people moving around, hearing voices talk but not being able to make out who was talking

or what they were saying. It wasn’t until the final rose was put onto the casket where everything

hit like a sucker punch, taking all the air out of me. Flashbacks of the phone call, screams, and

the funeral all hitting at once and allowing me to break down at that moment and feel every

emotion I had bottled up. At that moment it felt like I was underwater and had finally broken

through the surface.

Experts, K. (Ed.). (n.d.). Death and grief (for teens) - nemours kidshealth. Retrieved

February 05, 2021, from https://kidshealth.org/en/teens/someone-died.html