My Survivor
That
day is forever engraved into my brain. My dad pulled into the driveway. Ryan
and Abby were in the passenger seat. The minute my dad walked into the house, I
saw the look on his face. I just stared at him and screamed “NO!”
My
heart was beating at rapid pace. My eyes welled up. My world fell apart. How
could this happen? Why Cheryl? I didn’t want to believe it, and part of me was
hoping it was a nightmare. It was too soon for her to be taken from us.
A
survivor is someone who carries on despite hardships or trauma.
A
survivor is someone who perseveres.
A
survivor is someone who copes with a trauma or a setback.
She
was a survivor. Our survivor. My survivor.
Breast
cancer.
Stage
three—normally the stage that no one can survive.
Cheryl
had breast cancer from the day I first met her when she moved into the back
apartment of my families first home, until the day she died. Stage three breast
cancer took her away from my family and I forever on April 12, 2010. Two and a
half months before she could’ve watched me get my high school diploma.
Throughout
my entire life she was struggling to fight the disease. She had been a
survivor, and than suddenly it came back stronger than ever. It took all of the
life out of her until she was in a private hospital room trying to fight for
more time.
She
didn’t want to have any visitors. She didn’t want her son Ryan or her husband
Larry to even see her in the condition she was in.
A
private room in Greenwich Hospital in the beginning of April was where she was
fighting for more time.
She
knew the time was getting closer where God would have to take her away from us
and she didn’t want anyone in the room with her the night she knew was her
last. She passed away peacefully in her sleep after putting up a fight against
breast cancer for eighteen years of her life.
For
eighteen years Cheryl had it worse off than anyone else that I have ever met.
But from an outsider’s point of view, no one would ever be able to point out
that she was suffering. I cannot find a moment in time where I saw Cheryl
without a smile on her face. The sight of her smile is forever imprinted in my
memory of her.
Long
weekends were her favorite—she took it as an excuse to always have her family
and friends over, especially in the summer around the pool. I cannot count the
number of late summer nights I spent around the fire pit next to the pool
roasting marshmallows and enjoying laughs. Our two families were one family.
Her
husband was my second dad. Her son, I considered to be my own brother. We were
family without the blood relation to each other.
Walking
through the door of your house just doesn’t feel right anymore. It feels like
something is missing. An empty and hollow feeling fill all of the rooms. Why
the hell are you gone?
Ironic
that I am writing this today. Today being the twelfth of the month. 2 years and
6 months since you’ve been gone. 910 days that Ryan has had to wake up without
his mother there. He turned sixteen in May and she would be so proud of the
amazing man he is growing up to be.
Not
a second, minute, hour or day go by where she doesn’t cross my mind. I hate
that she was taken from me. How could someone take away such an amazing person
from all of her family and friends? It was not her time to go. She was a
survivor. She was our survivor. She
was my survivor.
Her
memory forever lives on in her parents, her sister, her husband, her son, my
parents, my sister, and myself. Cheryl’s Peep’s
is a team that her sister Cindy put together. A team that walks in every Susan
G. Komen walk to help raise money for breast cancer.
I do
not understand why the hell she was taken from us, but she is no longer
suffering. She will forever be a survivor in my mind and in my heart.
Assignment: To write a piece about someone who has it worse off than you do, and define a word in the piece.
**This is from Creative Writing**
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