Everybody has epiphanies in their lives that make them realize something about themselves or world around them that was once outside the capacity of their minds, like a mystery. Whether they range from discovering small talents to realizing a harsh truth about the real world that helps a person mature, all epiphanies are events that change a person’s perspective of the world and affect a person’s life at that moment in time in which it occurred and much later on, when the truth can be applied. In my case, as an individual, my realization was not a happy one, but it is something that can and will be applied later in life and helped me by having an early experience rather than a later one.

The event took place in 2009, 7 years ago, when I was 7 years old. I got home from school one Friday evening, looking forward to spending a nice weekend at home playing outside with my friends and watching cartoons late at night. I went upstairs and my mom and dad had a sad look on their faces, and I couldn’t really take much more away from that until they told me the news: my grandfather had passed away.

During that time of my life, I really didn’t know how to react or respond and didn’t really feel much emotion immediately. My whole life before this event was just watching movies and television shows in which they portray beloved fictional characters die in some sort of dramatic and extremely sad way, and it made me feel sad for some time, but it was not true sadness since I knew that it was just fictional and something like this would never (or as I close-mindedly thought could never) happen in real life to affect me that much. Other times, I would read about these kinds of things in newspaper articles or when I watched the news. For example, in the newspaper there would be something like: “Car accident leaves 2 dead”, and then an hour later on the news: “4 killed in house fire”. It was just so common to hear about people dying and terrible things happening to people that it became more of a “that’s a shame” type situation that actually feeling sad or experiencing any emotion about it. Because I had never lost anyone so close to me before that time, the only experience I had with losing things close to me were my goldfish and numerous T.V. show characters that I liked, obviously very minor things that pale in comparison to real life events.

My grandfather had always been around when I was younger and would play with my brother and me when my parents were busy, so it wasn’t like he was distant. When my mom told me he had died, I thought to myself, “It will just blow over after some time, there’s no way it could have actually happened.” I went back into my room and the emotions didn’t really start setting in when my family just started emitting a depressing vibe, and it was then when I realized, “This actually happened. This is real life.”

My first thought was influenced by all the other depictions of death I had seen and read about in fiction or just heard on the news as I casually walked by the living room T.V. Nothing affected me personally, so it didn’t matter to me. It took this moment, this epiphany, for me to truly realize how painful someone (anyone) dying can really affect someone else who is close to them.

When we attended the funeral, I had already had my realization by then, but I was still stuck in my own little family “bubble”, only thinking of this one death in family and not even thinking about anything I had read in the newspaper or saw on the news. I thought this would only be a one-time event for me personally, and that it had never happened before nor will it ever happen again. Because of this thought, I feel like my epiphany was only half complete at this time.

This realization opened my eyes up so much wider so I could see the world in a completely different perspective. I think of it as a “blessing in a tragedy”. What this means is that a tragic event has made me able to interpret and feel deeper emotions when I hear about something like this happening to anyone, not just me.

Before it, my mind was blurred between fiction and reality, and reading about a man who had committed suicide was sadly no different than watching a character get eaten to death by zombies in a movie. My grandfather’s passing helped me put a fine line between these two concepts, and it has started to apply very well over time. Now when I see or read about something tragic, I’m not secluded in a little bubble. I think to myself, “That person who died must have a family who is affected deeply by his/her loss”. It’s not just the same ritual of reading about a person dying, brushing it off as a shame, and moving on. It’s reflecting on it with personal experience and feeling empathy for the person’s family, because one person’s death affects many other people. It’s not just the death of a single man anymore; it’s the jolting affect it has on his family and so many more people. In a way, I should be thankful for having such an experience so early on in my childhood. One of my greatest fears is that if I hadn’t had this epiphany, I may still be the way I was before. I wouldn’t feel any empathy for all the people dying in the wars around the world, for all the people that I read about who die in accidents; I would be feeling a fake sadness. It wouldn’t help if something happened to my family or someone close to me today or tomorrow, or in the many years to come.