Writing Assignment 1draft 1

It was the end of 2006 and I had being having a rough year. My grandpa, the only grandparent I had left on my dad's side,had been hospitalized and the doctors didn't know what was wrong with him. AFter a lot of worry and many tests he was diagnosed with Lymph Node Cancer. It wasn't a cancer I had heard of, so I did a little research and found ou that it was one of the tougher types of cancer and that most people who got it didn't survive. On top of that, my dad had told me that it was the same type of cancer that my dog had died of just six months earlier. I had always been close to both my dog, Anna, and my grandpa, Joe. He, like the rest of my family lived in England so although I didn't get to see him a lot, I was very close to him.

He was a mechanic in WWII and he would always tell me a story about how they would get a chocolate bar and a pack of ciggarettes every week. My grandpa didn't smoke so he would sneakily throw his ciggarettes onto someone else's bed from behind his newspaper. One week all of his bunkmates decided to get together and throw their chocolate onto his bed, he of course was thrilled to get all that chocolate. Everytime I saw my grandpa he would tell me this story, and it is one of my fondest memories of him.

Summer '06 my mom, sister, and I took a trip tp England and saw my grandpa looking the best he had since he had gotten sick. We all thought he was getting better, until mid november. We got a call from my dad saying my grandpa was worse than ever. I got worried but my dad was teh only one who could fly out that day, and my mom couldn't miss any work at that point so my sister and I traveled across the ocean together the next day. My aunt picked us up at the airport and we drove to the Hospice center where my grandpa was. When we got there we were told that he had died about a half and hour before we got there, but that he knew we were on our way there. It was one of the saddest days of my life, but I was glad that he was no longer suffering. That week when I was in England I think I cried the most I have in my life, and every weekend I think about his during the time we used to call him and chat about whatever had happened during the week. He was always a hard worker and whenever he would visit us he would always insist on helping out around the house. He would always bring my sister and I presents, even if it was only the little bad of blue toiletries they gace him on the plane with a little blue journal, I still have everything he gave me on taht last visit and I know I will never forget how much I loved him. Whenever I think about that day I wonder if it was fate that decided to make our plane 30 minutes earlier than scheduled, but not enough to see my grandpa alive. I don't know, maybe it was easier on us remembering him at his prime when it was almost like he wasn't sick instead of showing the signs of cancer. I suppose wheather or not that was the case it happened that way and we will probably never know the importance of it, I think I prefer it that way.