Personal Life and Aunt Essays

Submitted By shelbycorrin
Words: 1029
Pages: 5
Open Document
Shelby Stanyan
Nash
ENGL 1123
20 November 2012
Happiness in Despair Sunday afternoons were a ritual to me and my family – especially during Kansas City Chief football season. My family would gather in the living room, scarfing down homemade nachos, and forget about the burdens of this life and just enjoy screaming at the television. September 9th, 2007 was different, however. It was this Sunday afternoon that I had felt that I carried the world on my shoulders. On that Sunday morning, I woke up and anticipated a normal day of church and the laziness that follows after that. During church, I noticed the frantic looks on my family’s face. My aunt rushed to the back of the empty foyer to receive an unexpected phone call from the hospital. I sat there nervously looking around, wondering if anyone noticed my sweaty palms and my fidgety fingers. After the sermon, I immediately rushed to my father to anxiously ask him about the unforeseen phone call. As soon as I reached him, he looked hopeless. My mind raced of all bad thoughts possible. As soon as I was notified of what was going on, my heart became heavy.
My uncle was a lively man who lived life with pure joy even after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was first diagnosed with leukemia, cancer of the blood cells, when I was at a young age. This was an off and on battle throughout most of my life. I never understood the extremity of cancer until that day the hospital called my aunt during Sunday morning services. They called because my uncle requested to be taken off of all respiratory monitors. The ride to the hospital was silent. Being inside of the car felt like being inside of a small room with spikes on all four walls. There was nowhere to escape as the walls slowly moved in towards me. Outside of the car window, the world was happy. The sun was shining, kids were running through large piles of leaves, while their parents laughed and watched from the front porch. If only they had been feeling what I was feeling that day.
Walking to his room felt like I had ankle weights on. A lump started to form in my throat, I did not know what to expect when I first saw him. The hospital room was white and crisp. Everything had its place and there was a place for everything. Monitors beeped and nurses were in and out. My uncle was slowly losing consciousness due to the medications he was given, but he was still able to hear. My aunt told my uncle in a hushed tone that my family and I were there. He mumbled, notifying us that he heard my aunt. A sense of hope crept into my mind. I thought maybe this was all a dream and everything would go back to normal in no time. My aunt looked up at me and calmly asked me if I would like to say goodbye. I immediately rejected the offer, still feeling like it was all a bad dream and that I would wake up soon.
At 3:05 P.M. the nurse had made her last visit. She looked up with a sorrowful face. We knew. We knew he was gone. The pain was unbearable. Part of me felt selfish for only thinking about my own feelings. The other part of me felt angry. I tried to wrap my mind around why he was taken from my family when he did not deserve it. I did not know how my aunt kept herself under control. I constantly wondered how she would be happy again. Several years later, my aunt decided to remodel her bathroom as a much-deserved gift to herself. My friend and I stopped by for a short visit to see how she was doing. Immediately when we walked in, she had a
Show More

Related Documents: Personal Life and Aunt Essays

Summary Of Natasha Trethewey's Flounder

acclaimed scene from her childhood. The poem is centered on the personal memory of the author, who is at conflict with her aunt due to the fact that she is a mixed racial female. Had the point of view shifted to the that of the aunt, who displayed to have a strong racial positon in favor of the white race, the story would seize to include the fact that the aunt’s niece was a product of two different races. The author purposefully omitted the aunts side of the story in order to avoid racial tensions. However…

Words 404 - Pages 2

No Name Woman Analysis

Woman,” Maxine Hong Kingston writes of her personal experiences. She tells her memoir through a narrator while explaining the hardships of growing up in a Chinese-American family and living in the shadows of her dead aunt’s mistakes. Kingston’s memoir is a mixture of autobiography, imaginative fiction, Chinese myth, and folklore due to the surreal events shared. Throughout the story, the reader’s question if mother is exaggerating the story of the aunt to scare the narrator from making poor decisions…

Words 975 - Pages 4

No Name Woman Essay

how her aunt may have been when she brought shame to the family. Since Kingston could not ask about the No-Name Woman she invents scenarios of her aunt and her forbidden lover. She imagines her aunt mirror-gazing and fixing any flaw about her appearance; this act may have been from being lavished with attention for being the only daughter out of five sons or to attract another man. Kingston paints a vivid image of the society they live in throughout this chapter; it was important to her aunt to maintain…

Words 301 - Pages 2

Truth and Bright Water Essay

see how the aboriginal people’s history has affected their lives today, but also how the personal history of some characters has affected their lives. A person’s past can help one understand why they live their life the way they do; it is the answer to any question you had about them. All the minor events that go on throughout the novel explain how history affects an individual’s identity and Franklin, aunt Cassie and Monroe are excellent examples. First, when told about Franklin in the novel…

Words 1230 - Pages 5

Frederick Douglass 'Cruelty And Inhumanity'

evil nature of slavery, which beheld the United States of America during this period of time. He describes the vile cruelty inflicted upon slaves by their slaveholders for common mistakes. Douglass stresses the horrors of slavery through his own personal experiences as a slave, and includes his reactions and emotions in connection to these events. Since he travels from one master to another many times, he witnesses these terrors taking place throughout the country. His accounts include vivid details…

Words 1513 - Pages 7

To Kill A Mockingbird Ignorance Analysis

In Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, tells the story and life of Scout Finch who lived in the old town Maycomb. As she starts growing up, she begins to understand the world better as well as losing her ignorance.Ignorance is something that transcends through generation, race, and through the individual. Aunt Alexandra and Miss Gates are two adults that represents generational ignorance. Racial ignorance is another form of ignorance represented by Bob Ewell who opposes black clashes with Atticus…

Words 1321 - Pages 6

Silence In Joy Kogawa's Obasan

it also argues that keeping quiet may have some benefits. This essay will discuss the different roles of silence with its all dimensions aiming to show its strengths and weaknesses. Throughout the novel we see how identity, culture, memory -both personal and communal- and language are closely tied to each other. Identity is a pretty loose concept especially talking about cultural identities, but what one can say is that language(or lack thereof) in all aspects is an important part of one's cultural…

Words 635 - Pages 3

To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter 12-13 Analysis

To Kill A Mockingbird Chapter 12-13 Writing Many people do stuff because they love it, because the crave it, because it’s their passion in life, and they want nothing more. But, some people do things because that's just how life set them up. It was their fate, their density, the reason they became what they are today. For Atticus in the book To Kill A Mockingbird, his trial on Tom Robinson is this case. It’s his “one case in his lifetime that affects him personally…” according to page 101. This…

Words 470 - Pages 2

How Does Harper Lee Use Social Injustice In To Kill A Mockingbird

presented in United States; an era where the social injustices portrayed are based upon the standards of one's personal perspective and popular opinion. Harper Lee writes this novel through dramatic and sad conflicts in an old town known as Maycomb. Characters such as Dolphus Raymond who is an outcast in society, Aunt Alexandra who judges within her own race, and Tom Robinson whose life tragically comes to an end because of the inequity ways of the society, uncovers and unfolds the truth behind the…

Words 776 - Pages 4

Essay about Illness: Medicine and daily Lives

relations, and overall outlook on life. Certainly dealing with an illness is extremely hard but it challenges one to recreate their identity and find their own coping mechanisms that fit best for them. It is important to become fully aware of the effects that illnesses take on a particular individual and the limits it sets on personal activities, physical functions, and social rules. It becomes clear that chronic illnesses negatively impact individuals whole life experience. Dealing with an illnesses…

Words 662 - Pages 3