Cancer. I bet a bunch of people can relate to this journal because of how very many people this illness kills each year. In 2003, when I was only 10, my grandmother became one of those statistics, another number added to how many people cancer killed that year.
It has been almost 7 years. 7 years since I have seen her face, heard or voice or spoke to her. 7 long years that could have been different. 7 years in which our family slowly fell to pieces. And there are many more years to pass without her, until I eventually join her.
She started chemo in perhaps August that year. Everybody told her to, but the supposed medicine only made her worse. It made her sicker. And instead of dying in her bed at home, she slipped away painfully hooked up to tubes and wires so far away from her home.
My grandmother raised me. My mother couldn't afford me and my brother so she took us in. She gave us a life we never would have had without her. Me and her were extremely close all my life until the day she went to the hospital. She never came back out.
She died on November 20th 2003, a week before Thanksgiving. Needless to say, the holiday has never been the same and never will be.
I am extremely bitter on this subject, still angry that she was taken from me. Angry that so many people still have grandparents and I don't. Angry that a hole that nobody can ever fill is left behind.
I wonder every day what life would be like if she hadn't died. It probably would have been so much easier. But through her death, I gained a strength I never would have if she had lived. The strongest steel is indeed forged from the fires of hell. And though the flames burn, you come out the other side tough as nails.
The memory just came back with a vengeance this morning, because of my friend talking about his grandfather's cancer, so I wrote about it. I miss her and mourn her to this day. I wish the best for my friend's grandfather, and hope to God it turns out better than my own situation did all those years ago.
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