It was September 11, 2019. On Wednesday morning. I was in the 3rd hour. Nothing about my day was bad until I heard the news. I was called down to my mom’s room. She was the justice coordinator so no one was in there at the time. All I can remember is walking in her room and seeing her bawling, as she told me that papa has died. My stomach felt like I was falling from the Empire State building as my eyes filled with tears. I turned around and punched the wall as hard as I could. She just grabbed me and hugged me for what felt like an eternity. She says we have to go. Inside I don’t even want to move. I was sitting there frozen in shock that I just lost one of my best friends. One of my biggest supporters. And to make it worse when we had left his favorite song came on the radio in the car. The song was “I’ll Fly Away”. Me and my mom looked at each other and started bawling. It felt like 3 knives stabbed me in the heart. When we reached our house I couldn’t get out of the car because I felt so nauseous.  When I reached our front door I was so weak I couldn’t open our sliding door. 

This really took a toll on my family. You see, my grandpa was very important to my family. He was our pastor and all of our biggest supporters. He would show up to all of my and my sisters' games. He would always be the loudest person in the gym. I always got asked if that “crazy guy” was there for me. And my answer was always yes, yes he is. I was never afraid to say he was my grandpa. Because everyone who meets him always says how great of a guy he was. He was the most caring and gentle person I've ever met and will ever meet. He could talk to a person for hours. He could go up to a random person and probably be their best friend in 30 minutes. He just loved people in general. If he saw somebody struggling he would go up to them and do anything they needed. My dad really struggled through this but we were all there for him the whole way through. My uncle was also struggling pretty hard but his way of coping with it was kinda just shut us out so for probably close to a year I didn't see him nor his family. But slowly he started to come to more family events. It took my family a while to adapt to all the changes and it still hurts pretty bad but I can handle the pain now. Unfortunately, people like my grandma find it a lot harder to accept what happened. But I understand that because they were together for a very long time and went through ups and tons of downs. I think she is starting to cope with it but my sister and I were with her the whole way just to make sure no harm happened to her.

He died of stage 4 cancer in a lot of places in his body. It took up over half of his body and just started to take away his muscle and fat and stuff that you need in your body to survive. He also lost all of his hair and everyone knows my family is known for their strength and their hair. I could barely look at him in the end because of how much weight he lost. He didn’t even look like the man I knew. He looked completely different. But we all are okay now and are all back together. We also all know that he is with us spiritually and mentally.