Life Is Love

Life, most people say, is fleeting. It flies right by us and we barely even notice until something horrible happens. My name is Bec and I am sixteen. August 3rd was the fourth anniversary of my mother's death. It all started on January sixth of 2004 when my mother was checked into the hospital. I was scared; a rock settled in my gut. My grandfather had passed on the year before. Since then, then the very mention of the six letter word cancer scares me very badly.

They told us my mom had either brain cancer or an infection. Needless to say I prayed really hard for it to be an infection. My mom stayed for the tests but nearly forced the doctor to let her come home for my birthday on January tenth. They caved and we spent the day together.

Then in February my mother went back to the hospital for a brain biopsy. After the results came back we knew. She had cancer: four tumors in her brain. Two were active they called it malignant. My world went crashing. I was in sixth grade and I was going to lose my mom. It brought my dad, my grandma on my dad's side, and me really close. But that didn't change the fact that my mom was dying. When I heard the girl's in my school (same sex school) complaining about their families I wanted to yell at them to tell them to be thankful for their families. I just sat in my classroom and wondered if today was the day my mother was going to die.

The medicine they gave my mom made her act strange until the point that I couldn't recognize her. I could feel the good times fade from my mind. I couldn't deal. I was a child being forced to grow up. I did love my mom very much but it got to a point where even she did not want me to see her as she was. She loved me and by that she wanted me to cherish her memory, not her present state. Then one day in August she stopped breathing and passed on. I have to admit I wasn't sure of an afterlife until then. But because my mom was such a kind, loving and caring person, she has to be somewhere good now.

Now I am sixteen. I still carry on my mother's memory. We both shared a deep love of books and I still continue to read like crazy. My dad jokes that I have half of Borders in my room. We have moved since then to a school where I am not reminded of my mother. My mother always encouraged individuality and boy do I have that. I try to embody her but at the same time be myself. I want to be a novelist in order to help children dealing with what I had to deal with. If I am able to write one thing that makes someone smile or laugh in a tough situation, or cry in order to release their fears and sadness, I believe I will have done a great job.

My mother taught my about many things: love, patience, happiness, friendship, and many more things that I try to live by. I try to help others accept their hardships. My friends say I'm too hopeful of a better tomorrow but we need that kind of hope. That was the hope my mother had, and I will never let it go.

Submitted by Anonymous

Optimism