A clock ticks and a heart monitor beeps along in sync. The clock stays ticking while simultaneously the beeps become slower and slower. His heart was stopping. As he took his last breath and closed his eyes, it hit me so hard I felt like I was the one dying. How do I keep going without one of my biggest influences there to help me grow? I didn't want to live a life where grandpa no longer sang the song I'll be loving you always to me. I wanted to live with the creativity and intelligence he surrounded me with. It wasn't a choice that was makeable and it didn't matter what I wanted or didn't. Going forward I lived with those memories and lessons he gave me tucked away in my back pocket while tears occupied the following weeks. It wasn't easy, regardless of the age I was. Anyone losing someone is a pain that strikes the heart with so much force, it feels as if it has stopped beating.

I remember it was when I ran out of tears and I couldn't cry anymore that I realized the potential I had in myself as a writer. My first serious piece of writing was the feelings I experienced in the moment my grandfather passed. The shock, the sadness, the tears. ALL of it. Writing out my feelings led me to cope with this situation better than all the crying ever did.

When I went to his burial service and watch them lower his casket, it really hit me. I mean when I kissed his body goodbye in the hospital bed it hit me then too, but this time it hit me in the perspective of life. Life is ever changing and it never slows down. I realized that day how much family meant to me. people would often say to always tell someone you love them because you never know when you'll see them next. That sentence finally meant something to me.

My grandfather died very close to the end of my freshman year in high school. That year I had made new friends and was in a whole new atmosphere compared to middle school. I felt cool, and by cool I was quite the 15 year old who had an attitude with her longtime friends from before high school started. I was a cheerleader and a very social butterfly. I thought about my whole first year of high school the day he was buried and realized how unimportant being popular really was. I thought about how it didn't matter that I was a cheerleader and none of my best friends were. I realized that why have such an attitude with all of the friends I love just because we've entered a new chapter. Why try to change who you are and be mean to gather attention? Losing someone so close to you makes you step back and check yourself. Death is the rawest form of pure emotion life can give you. It sits with everyone differently, but it definitely opened my eyes. I realized how short life truly is and wasting it on trying to fit in and be like everyone else was not the way I wanted to spend it. When death turned out my grandfathers light, it exposed me to a reality so raw I wasn't the same person who walked into that hospital hours before. I was stronger. I pushed through the tears and the heartaches and I kept going. Even though my grandfather isn't physically with me anymore, I know he's looking down at me from Heaven. Within all the realizations that experience gave me it led me in the right direction to growing up. It became clear that life wasn't always so nice. Life was no longer sunshine and rainbows, thunder and lightning came into view.