It was the spring of 2009, my family and I were on our way to see my grandma, but we all knew that it would be the last time that we would see her outside of a funeral home.

We had pulled into the parking lot of the hospice center she had been staying at in the evening. Now, for your knowledge, my grandma had been diagnosed with ALS in about 2006, (Maybe sooner, but that’s around the time when I had been actively aware something was going on.) at first it just meant that she needed a cane and had a harder time walking up the stairs, then later it was an electric wheelchair, then it was just her only being able to lay in bed, which leads me to fast forward to 2009 at the hospice center where the ALS had been at its absolute worst. When we had gotten out of the car and started strolling toward the entrance, I began thinking to myself; I remember thinking, “ Wow, this is a really nice place.” Well, I mean, yeah I’d want to be somewhere nice when I’m about to check out.

My parents had signed all of us in and guided us to the room my Grandma was staying at. The walk there was quiet to me, the staff may have been talking to us, but I didn’t pay much attention, I was just thinking about when I would hang out with some friends. It’s selfish, I know, but that in my mind was better than brooding about the situation at hand.
The atmosphere of the room had looked very nice, the floors had been an amazing stained wood with a clear coat shiny enough that it had almost seemed like a mirror, the curtains had been a white creamy color and a chair in the room of the same color, it had felt like a very comforting room to me, but knowing the circumstances the room had made me feel bliss yet sorrow at the same time. I had walked up next to my grandma’s bed, to see my grandma laying there, absolutely motionless, if I hadn’t said to her,
“Hey, Grams” and to have her reply to me, with a quiet and faltering voice,

“Hi, Adam” I would have believed she was not with us anymore. My brother, dad and mom all had greeted her as well, and she replied in a similar way. We had all stood there quietly and awkwardly, thinking of what to do when my mom said to us

“ Do you boys want to go walk around the place for a while?” To that statement, we both replied,
“Yeah! Sure!” and we were out the room and on our way to explore. Now, if you think we found something out of the ordinary or went on some cool adventure in the meantime… Sorry to disappoint. We had found a TV in  the backroom with what also appeared like some kind of donation drive. I think it was on some type of ad channel, so naturally, as nine and eleven year olds do, my brother and I started going lightning fast looking for something interesting to watch, and a couple minutes later, to our amazement, we found something we found interesting to watch, probably some kind of action or comedy movie, and before I knew it, the TV had stolen my attention and I was under its multicolor control. When I used to watch TV, I would lose sense of time almost all together, but after awhile I would have points where I would get bored of that, and when that happened, I would want to go out and do something else, something cool. Anyway, after about (x) amount of time, our parents came to get us so we could say goodbye to our grandma. We had gone into her room, the air still ill setting and said to her

“goodbye Grams, we love you.” And to that, my grandma had attempted to reply, “goodbye, I love you t-” and before she could finish, she began to start sobbing for dear life, at this point with ALS, the most she could do was kind of talk, breathe, and without a doubt, cry. This was kind of freaky to me, seeing my grandma, who from the sounds of it was a take no sh** kind of woman, and here she was, breaking down, sobbing severely for she knew that her days were almost up. As she was lying there sobbing I remember wondering, “Oh God, is this going to be me in the future? Am I going to be the one on the bed?” Thankfully, after some research, I read that it was non-familial, so a very low chance I’ll have the same fate, but seeing my grandma that day, not able to express the person she was, almost like being trapped in the prison of her own body was absolutely horrifying.

Come a week later, I had been sitting in the living room playing Xbox when I heard my dad to start to sob; which had confused me at first, so I walked into the kitchen to see what the matter was, but then shortly after I realized that he had seen her another time after us, and she had passed away.

School the next day had been rather hard, all I could think about was seeing my grandma sob the way she did, and my dad giving us the grave news, but what helped me ease the pain was that my friends had heard what happened and they all were by my side, giving me support through my troubling times. We all may have been in 4th grade, but man, they really knew how to cheer me up 

Having my friends there with me to help me through that caused me to see that life is going to be tough, events like these are going to happen again and again, such as now, my aunt has breast cancer and the doctors say that she won’t be around to see another summer, and even though I know that this won’t be an easy time for anyone, especially my family, I know that I’ll always have friends and family to be there with me through thick and thin. This moment in my life has helped me to try to stay in contact with old friends of mine, make new ones through school and make new friends through old friends, and to leave the ones I know that really truly are not my friends and would not be there in any of my times of need.