An incident that dramatically changed my life was the day my grandma died.
It was a friday and my mom let me stay home from kindergarten since we were going to  pick up my uncle from Detroit Metro Airport, when he arrived from Dallas Texas.
I hadn’t seen him in over a year because of his busy schedule and the distance between where we live, so when we finally saw him mom and I were ecstatic.
We exchanged warm tight hugs before we exited the tall, automated glass doors of the airport. My mom drove my uncle and I back to our house and we planned what we wanted to do for the rest of the day.The next day we planned on driving up to Decker, which is in the heart of the thumb to visit my grandparents at their house since my uncle hadn’t seen his parents in a long time.
My mom and I try to see my grandparents as much as we can but its hard to go spend time up there with my mom working so much and me dancing on saturdays.
I always dreaded spending my weekends up there with a handful of adults, away from my friends at home.My grandparents house is somewhat small and the same color as a fresh white sheet of paper. Their house sits on over 100 acres of land, half filled with assorted crops and half filled with thousands of giant trees that created a green roof over the brown dirt paths.
My mom told my uncle what was going on with our family here, they spent most of the afternoon gasping with surprise or laughing. Just by listening to this I could tell they were glad to be together again. After a while, we decided to go out to dinner. We walked in and immediately were seated at a place called Red Knapps. I thought to myself, the service here should be fast since we were seated so quickly. I was wrong.
The service slower than a snail. My mom pulled out her phone to call my Grandma like she normally does around 5:30 on her way home from work. Grandma didn’t answer which we all thought was weird since they always talk at this time and she should have been expecting her call. My mom then got a call from her cousin Cathy who lives just two houses away from my grandparents. I could hear her sobbing and trying to talk through the tears but I couldn’t hear exactly what she was telling my mom. I watched my moms expression change like I had never experienced before. Her face froze, a few tears started to leak from her eyes. I had never seen my mom cry before, I didn’t know what to do. I could tell she didn’t know what to do either. “Mom isn’t breathing... they took her to the hospital.” I watched as my uncles expression quickly started to match my moms, but I could see him holding back tears. “Mom, what's going on?” I asked her, I was confused. “I will talk to you in the car, okay?”
Mom called over the waiter and canceled our order and quietly told them what had happened. Mom took my hand and we rushed out the door. No one talked on the way home. I was too scared to ask my mom any more questions, I had never seen this side of her before.
My mom told me to pack a bag, I randomly threw some clothes in my suitcase then got back into the car. My mom drove us directly to the hospital closest to my grandparents house. No one said a word. We arrived at the hospital an hour later. My mom asked the receptionist where my grandma was. “Room 113.” She said sympathetically. We made our way through the small hospital, with light green walls. Just being here made me depressed. My grandpa was sitting next to my grandmas lifeless body. His face had been drenched with tears, I had never seen him cry. We all sat down around my grandma who was lying stiffly on a hospital bed covered with a light green blanket. I wondered why they covered her, can you be cold after you’re dead? No one said anything for a while. I watched everyones blank, tear soaked faces look down, at grandma then down again. My grandpa softly started to explain what had happened. “The doctors say she had a heart attack, I heard her fall and called the ambulance but she didn’t make it.” His voice was shaky and he was crying. Mom got up to hug him. I reached out to touch my grandmas hand. She was weirdly cold. It finally hit me that this would be the last time I saw her. I started to cry again thinking about all of the memories we had and that there would never be any more.
My mom explained to my 7 year old self “see Lydia, your body is just a suitcase for your soul and when you die your soul leaves your suitcase behind and goes up to heaven.”
I tried to make sense of that in my head but I didn’t really get it. The adults decided that they wanted her cremated instead of buried and talked about all the things that had to be done. It was very late by the time we left the hospital. I didn’t want to say goodbye.
I started thinking about all the weekends that my mom would send me up to stay with them and I would dread it. But now I wish I would have done it more often.
All of this taught me to make the most of everything and to not take anything for granted because you never know when you will lose someone or something unexpectedly.
It was a hard year for my family especially with Grandma dying so unexpectedly but it brought us closer and taught me an important lesson.