It was a normal last day of summer camp. I almost refused to get up because once you got up, you accept the fact you were leaving your friends and going back to what ever state you came from. I got dressed, packed my things in my huge lime green suitcase. After my last meal of camp food, I slowly made my way to the main building to be picked up. After a sad ride home filled with me and my brother spilling out two weeks of excitement to our parents, we pulled into the driveway. I ran up stairs to see two very excited guinea pigs waiting for me. Then my parents called me down. At first, I thought they were mad because I had left my room in complete chaos when I had left. But when I got down, I realized they didn’t seem mad, just upset.
“Sit down,” they both said in unison. My dad had the most serious look on his face. Let’s face the facts; my dad is not in any which, way, or forum serious. I now knew something was up.
“You know your cousin, Michelle, right?” He asked almost seeming like a question, but almost not.
“Yea,” my brother and I responded.
“Well,” my mother chimed in, “there was a situation while you were gone. You cousin got a blood clot in her brain and is now in a coma. It’s not going well. They don’t think she’s going to make it.”
At this point, she started tearing up. I just looked at both of them. My brother left the room, and my mother soon followed him out. At first I thought it was a cruel joke, but now, I was reconsidering that notion. I couldn’t believe it. I felt the tear welling up in my eyes. My parents came to hug me, but I pulled away. At situations like this, a hug is really just not going to help. I was later informed that she had now been in a coma for a week. My mother had been at the hospital everyday. I was supposed to go to my friend’s graduation party later that day. However at that moment, I wasn’t really up for it. I heard a knock at my door about ten minutes after I had stormed up.
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the party? You need to have some fun.” My mother said trying to make me feel better. I shook my head no. “We could go to the hospital first. She really doesn’t look bad sweetie. She just looks like she’s sleeping, that’s all.”
After thinking long and hard, I had decided to go. I got dressed, and my mother and I pilled into the mini-van and went to the hospital. My mom knew exactly where the room was. After waiting a couple minutes for other family members to pile out, my mom and I went in by our selves. It was weird; she did look like she was sleeping. But it was the sheer fact I knew she wasn’t that brought on the tears.
“Sweetie you know its okay,” my mom said.
I looked at her. How on earth could she say that! I couldn’t hold it in.
“NO, mom, it’s not okay. Don’t you see! It’s not alright! It’s not going to be alright! It’s not fair!”
My mom and I left. We went to the party, and I couldn’t stop crying. I tried to have a fun time, but I just couldn’t. We left early. I tried to visit her everyday for the next couple weeks. It was really hard.
After being in a coma for two and half weeks, my cousin Michelle passed away. I didn’t cry. I had been crying for the weeks I had been in the hospital. The funeral happened to fall on the second day of my freshman year of high school. My cousins all came. It was so weird. I felt like I was in a fog the entire day. My cousin Tracy, her sister, still can’t put the pieces back together.
Each day I wish I was back waking up in the my bunk at camp; hoping that everything that happened was a dream. Because in reality, things like this don’t happen to good people like the ones in my family. And in the end, all of did happen. It just doesn’t seen real to me. I don’t know when it will, or if it ever will. So until it does, I’ll keep hoping to be back in m bunk at camp. Not wanting to go home.