The building sits, in relative silence until the ring of a bell shatters the fragile quiet. Suddenly the hall fills with rowdy students, ready to go home, colors are all around; red, blue, orange, turquoise, and everyone is jostling to get down the steps. Unlike most days when I go straight downstairs and outside, where my ride is normally waiting, I tarry in the classroom, getting all of my homework, folders, and binders into my backpack. By the time I step out of the classroom there is only a dozen students left in the hallway. I quickly walk downstairs and on my way out I hear someone call my name. It was my father, waiting outside of the windows that parallel the office. He beckons to me and I follow, into the office. I’m filled with fear, wondering what was happening; was I in trouble?
         I step into the cramped walkway that borders the secretary’s office and my dad slowly tells me that the doctor’s only gave my grandmother a few days, at the most, to live. Immediately my insides felt like they were melting. Ii didn’t know what to do, I gasped while my dad made sure that I would be fine to leave school for a few days so we could go down to Florida to try and see her; my mother and sister had already went down to Florida a few days before to help my grandma recover from surgery.
I vaguely heard him ask me if I needed any textbooks or folders from my locker. I nodded and he followed me back into the expansive room where students ate breakfast and lunch. We trekked up the gray stairs to the second floor where my locker was. On the way he tried to encourage me and tell me what my Mom had said when she called him a few hours before. My grandmother who had just had emergency surgery had taken a turn for the worse; they didn’t expect her to live. I quickly went to my locker and grabbed the only book I needed, my Biology book. We went back outside and got into the car, ready to go and tell my sister at her work.
On the way to tell my sister our quiet talking in interrupted by the ringing of my Dad’s phone. He answers it and I can hear my mom on the other line, sobbing, telling my dad that her mother had died. My dad told her that we’d leave as soon as we could, and just as he hung up the phone he started crying. But I couldn’t cry, all I could think of was her life. She went through a lot in her life, but she didn’t let it get her down. She loved her family, and loved life. Her family and her faith meant everything to her, and they mean everything to me.
My sister is a teacher, and at this time she was working at the Grade School in town as a long-term substitute teacher for a second-grade teacher who had cancer. School had been out by this time for about thirty minutes. We walked into the building that smelled of cleaner and dust, and immediately walked down to my sister’s classroom. She was in the room, her desk surrounded by other, much smaller, desks that were vacated. My dad told her and she immediately started weeping, but for some reason, I couldn’t cry. The tears would come later, much later, when I was alone, left with my thoughts.
My Grandmother showed me that family and faith will help you get through. No matter what you can always count on your family to come through and as long as you have faith you can do anything.