  I am so young and naive that I am completely freaked out by death. I can't begin to contemplate anyone I know passing on. If someone I love ever leaves me, I don't know what I'll do. And the knowledge that nothing you can do will bring them back, living and knowing you will never see them again in this life, is so unconceivable. I've known three people who have died: Brita Bowman, my grandmother, and my grandfather. Brita died when I was eight, and I don't really remember it very clearly.
I just remember not believing it. I though it was a rumor or something. Sort of like "Ryan like-likes Amanda" except it was about a girl's death, not a crush. She fought that fucking leukemia like hell, but I guess it was just "her time". It was so surreal, less painful than it was difficult to understand. My Grandma Lois died when I was nine.
She had cancer, and we had known for a long time that it was going to happen. When she first got cancer, I was eight. I remember sitting in the children's playroom at the hospital and starring at a big, colorful portrait of some exotic fish. There were all sorts of other toys and there were cartoons playing on the TV, but all I could focus on was the picture of those damn fish. I guess I though if I starred at it long enough, I could fall into the painting and leave my family. I couldn't stand seeing them crying and being so sad.
I just wanted to leave. She died the next year. And whenever someone says the word "cancer" I think of tropical fish to this day. Grandpa Ted died a year and a half ago. I went to visit him in the hospital the day after the surgery. It was the scariest thing ever.
He had been fine, we were told, for the first 24 hours. But something had gone wrong by the time I went to visit. His last words to me were "Anna..." And that's it. He started moaning and then his blood pressure crashing. Within the three hours I was there, he got really sick. The doctors reassured us that he would be fine, and since we live 10 minutes from the hospital, we went home.
When I was sleeping, he went into cardiac arrest and died. It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me. My parents woke me up at two in the morning and told me he had died. It was literally like someone hit my in the chest. I still can't believe I will never see him again. He was supposed to come to my Jr. High Commencement the next week.
I won't hear him laugh, I won't be able to give him "grandpa hugs", he won't see my high school graduation, he won't be at my wedding. My children won't have a great-grandfather. All because of this stupid thing called death. I can't understand why someone would commit suicide when life is so beautiful and so precious. It's such a hopeless, desperate crime... death. And yet it looms above us each day.
And yet, there is hope. When we die, we are only gone to this world. Beyond the threshold of the earth, there is more happiness and more joy than then we could have in a thousand lifetimes on earth. And when we cross over to be with the one that created us, again we will see the people we love. I know one day I will see Brita, Grandma Lois, and Grandpa Ted. The question is, what will I do with the time I have before that day comes?
How will I spend my days? What legacy will I live behind? Of all the offenses I could commit in my lifetime, the one of the nameless indifference is the worst I can imagine. Affectionately... Anna 
