Worst things you have ever seen?

[Ms. Walsh]

I think the worst thing I've ever seen was seeing my grandmother die. It was last December, and between Thanksgiving to Christmas, it was just a horrible experience, especially for my mom who was her only child and whose father passed away when she was only 9. I lived with my grandmother from the time I was 2, and she took care of me and my sister while my mom worked.

The three weeks between when she got sick and when when she died were really stressful to me. I was just finishing up my first semester of college, and barely could balance finals and essays with coming home every weekend. I'm surprised I did okay in the end.

Seeing someone die (especially someone you love) is something that you'll never forget. It's such a traumatic experience. I can still remember seeing life slowly slip away from her, and all the pain that she was in towards the end. At the same time, though, it made me realize that there's a lot more to life than being sad.

The day that she died, my sister and I had spent the whole morning with her. But the whole time I kept thinking that I just needed to leave. There was something strong compelling me to just leave the room and maybe to go home and return later. Around 2 or so, my sister and I left to go home, and that's when she passed away. Both my parents and my other grandparents were in the room when it happened. I'm a really sensitive person, and I feel like my grandmother was the one telling me to leave because she knew that I might not have been able to witness it. The same thing happened when my aunt passed away the year before. She waited until her entire family was gone (they had gone to get coffee) and passed away. With my grandmother, though, I knew that she would have wanted people to be there, especially my mother. But I don't think she wanted my sister or I to see it. Death is such a strange phenomena.

Death is going to happen no matter what: sometimes we're prepared for it and sometimes we're not. I'd like to think that my grandmother was ready for what happened. She was 81 and her health had been getting worse over the past 10 years. It made me realize that death isn't something to worry about. It's just another step in a person's life. I'm not a very religious person, but I'd like to believe that there's some kind of afterlife that's even better than life on earth could ever be.