Before you, it was all rainbows and butterflies. The sound of laughter was everywhere we turned and tears only flowed because of happiness. We knew sadness but not like we soon would. You took our world of rainbows and butterflies and turned it to a world of rain and lightning. We thought we knew tragedy, but not like you taught us. You were cancer. You were what stripped the perfect life from the bare hands of a child. You are what made us grow up in the blink of an eye. Most importantly though, you taught us how to stand.

We grew up in a place where family was just a holler across the street and love ran abundantly. The life we lived was one that many were envious of, now so are we. When one was in pain we all were, that's when you asked God for his help. That's something that confused me when you came to town. We prayed, we begged, and we cried and you went away for some while. But why did you not stay gone? Why did God not keep you from us? I fought for this answer for two years, still to not find one.

Everyone said not to turn bitter, not to take the pain out on those looking in. But that's simply it, everyone was just looking in. They did not know what you had taken from us and the void that we were left. The void is one that runs deep and sometimes its unbearable, it is one that can never be filled. So that's exactly what we did, we searched for a way to fill that void until the truth came slapping across the face that there was not a way. The pain is something that you left us with. Something that you made sure we could never forget.

The life you took; you do not know just how precious it was. And the way you teased us with five years, why could it not have been fifty? You made us think that we had made it. That we had beat you. That we would never have to fight you again. But you teased us. You showed us the life we could have had after she beat you. Then out of nowhere you came back. You came back into our lives like the hell storm you were. You would let things get better then get worse, terribly worse. You were so terrible that hell itself feared you.

Congratulations, you won. I can argue and say that she won, that she is the one that beat you. But deep down like the void you left us, we all know that is a lie. You won because you destroyed us, our lives, the hugs that we now cry out for, and the three simple words of I love you that we would give it all to hear one last time. Why did you need her more than us? What gave you the power to take her from us?

You showed no empathy. Because of that though, it is almost three years later and we have started to piece our lives together. You still come up sometimes, just enough to crack us of what we've rebuilt. You're like the tsunami that followed the earthquake, you have done your damage but we always know there is more along the horizon.

The day will come where you take the joy out of our milestone points of life, but because of you we will know how to stand through it. You, are what took my perfect life.

Now it is my turn to build it back.