Final - cause essay

I've had my share of disastrous times. As a five year old, I fell asleep each night listening to my stepfather beat the shit out of my mother. Years later, I was devastated when she threw out my second stepfather, the only father figure that I'd ever had. Then there was the year that we were so poor we lived off spaghetti and ketchup and macaroni and milk. None of these hard times, however, prepared me for the horrific year of 2002. The following caused that year, which started out ok in January, to become a complete disaster by June.

In February of 2002, my husband and I made plans to fly to Colorado to see my aunt and uncle. Aunt Tae and Uncle Arlie never had kids of their own. They always treated me like I was their daughter. After years of struggling financially, Paul and I finally had the funds saved to go out and visit them. I called Uncle Arlie with the news and to find out what dates would work for them. He surprised me by being hesitant, then gave me the news -- Aunt Tae had been battling breast cancer for years, and it had now spread to her brain. I was horrified -- my beautiful Japanese aunt was dying. We continued with the plans to see her and Uncle Arlie. Unfortunately, she passed away five days before we arrived in Colorado.

In addition to this, my beloved grandmother had been placed in a nursing home. She had dementia and Alzheimer's and had fallen and broken her hip. A proud and independant woman, she had given up, and spent her days lying listlessly in bed. Her sister and former roommate, Aunt Flo, had been placed in a nursing home in Montana, where she was dying. I was heartbroken, as these two women did so much for me when I was a child, from taking me on trips to the White Mountains to shopping for school clothes that my mother couldn't afford to buy me. Aunt Flo passed away during our trip to Colorado. She was cremated and her ashes were sent to Maine to be buried in June.

After we got back from Denver, we heard that Auntie, Paul's great aunt, had taken a turn for the worse. She died in early May at a nursing home in Lincoln. After most of our grief had passed, we figured that since bad things happen in threes, we were off the hook for a while. Then, May 10, I got a call from my friend Donna. We both had boys in 3rd grade. She told me that one of the boys' classmates, Marissa Pinkham, had been killed in an atv accident. I was stunned and heart-sick. Marissa was a sweet little girl who loved sports and reading. No child deserves to die before their parents, and no parents should have to bury an innocent child. Paul and I, along with many other residents of Glenburn spent Mother's Day at Marissa's wake. I will never forget seeing that little girl lying in her casket, her face caked with makeup to hide the head injuries. Nor will I ever forget the wail of grief her mother let out at the funeral, as they were lowering Marissa's casket into the ground. That sound will haunt me forever.

A few weeks later, my cousin Eva flew to Maine from Texas with her husband and two baby girls. I really believe that Nana was holding out to see them before she died. She passed on the following day. My mother called me early that Saturday morning to tell me that Nana had died the previous evening. Paul and I went to the funeral home so I could say goodby to my nana. She was laying on a stainless steel stretcher covered with a sheet. I hugged her and kissed her cold cheeks, telling her I loved her and would never forget all that she'd done for me. We buried her ashes at the family plot in Augusta the following week, and went back three days later to bury Aunt Flo's urn.

The year slowly got better, but not until after another death. Krystal, another 3rd grader, lost her father to a heart attack. He died while working on the garage he was building for his wife and daughter. In August, my son's beloved cat went into the woods and never made it home, two weeks after the same thing happened to my cat. Hopefully, we put all of our bad luck into one year, and we should be safe for a while. If the saying is true that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, then Paul, the boys and I should be as tough as nails by now!