Shape

As I laid in bed, I began to think back to my past. I don't do this often, but right now I had nothing else to do. So I began to think back on some of my favorite memories: My first date, graduating college, and when I got married. Then my thoughts wandered to other memories that had impacted me in ways I never imagined.

    As a child I was spending much time with my grandparents. At some point my grandmother started getting ill and tired on a regular basis. It took years, but it was found out that she had gotten thyroid cancer. My family immediately started looking for treatment. After almost a year the doctors found more cancer in her brain. It was at this point that we had to make the most difficult decision.

    It was almost 2 weeks after she was placed in hospice when she had passed away. My sister had just gotten back from her recovery from a gymnastics accident and went to visit our grandmother. After she had gotten home we received a call from the hospital that our grandmother had passed away.

I remember now that it was then that I had decided to go into the medical profession. I wanted to help families and other people.

The funeral was a few days later and the whole family had come together. We were all happy to see each other, just wishing the circumstances had been different. She was a catholic, so we followed her wishes and had her funeral in a Catholic Church. My siblings, cousins, and I were to be the pole bearers. We brought the coffin containing her body in front of the father who then proceeded with the service. At the end we took the coffin back to the car that brought her. We didn't go to the grave yard to watch her be placed into the ground. She wouldn't want us to watch that.

I looked at the clock and decided that it was time to get up. When I had gotten downstairs I saw my wife had already made breakfast.

"Well you sure took your time" she said

" Reminiscing the past will do that to you" was my reply.

I hadn't been to the graves of my parents or grandparents for almost 5 years as I had very few breaks to spend with my family on vacation. I was given this holiday off so I decided for something different today.

"Hey kids. We're going to visit grandma and grandpa and great grandma and grandpa." I called to them.

"OK DAD!" was the reply from upstairs.

We had eaten breakfast and got into the car and drove to the grave yard where their final resting place was. As we walked we did it slowly, observing all the miniature American flags at the tombstones of the veterans buried here. When we got to the gravestones we gathered in the middle of them.

"It's taken time. Lemme tell my story."