Kate Zarlingo
Memories of the Flowers
A heartbroken girls life changed by a tragic moment in time.
I really hate hospitals. People die in hospitals.
When my family and I walked into the I.C.U. unit in Flagstaff, Arizona that's what I was thinking, mixed with the feeling of goosebumps on my goosebumps. I walked into the dark, dingy room where my grandpa was and we greeted our family to prepare for the worst.
That was the first time I've ever seen my grandpa so helpless. Imagine a typical farmer, but times that by a few. He cared about his cows and his garden. He always wore the same holey brown shirt and dirty green flannel. It was really weird to see him not wearing those stereotypical grandpa clothes. You know, people always say that what you wear describes your personality? That was definitely true about him. He wasn't privileged, and he cared more about his family than his personal appearance. Not seeing him in those dirty clothes was like stripping a part of his personality away.
We were there for the next few days. In those few days he miraculously recovered, and we went back to our normal lives. We went back to Colorado, and he went back to farming in his dirty clothes. After some time he was feeling better, and so we decided to do another annual backpacking trip like we had done every year prior. Our family decided not to go on this one. I don't know why. There wasn't really a reason, which was kind of stupid.
The rest of the family went on the backpacking trip and I decided to hang out with one of my friends. I texted my parents and I asked them if I could have a sleepover and all they texted me was, “No you have to come home. Your grandpa is sick.”
As soon as I walked through the door, I knew that something was wrong. The first thing they told me was that my grandpa had died. You know when somebody dies, you are shocked and you never cry because you have no idea how to feel? I knew exactly how to feel. I cried for two hours straight and after that long I couldn’t cry any longer. I was making weird noises, but tears were no longer coming out of my bloodshot eyes. It's like my body ran out of water. After you cry for that long, your heart starts to hurt. My heart didn’t know where to put the overwhelming emotions, so it decided to burn slowly and fearfully out of my chest.
Looking back on it, I was kind of glad that we stayed home and didn't go on the backpacking trip. We made all of the food for everyone and prepared our house so that our family could come into a safe and comfortable environment after the tragedy. I think if we were on that backpacking trip it would have been a lot worse than it was.
For the entire time we were preparing food and making our home comfortable we all felt the same way. We all felt really sad, by this point things had settled down. Still, nothing felt normal. It was like moving in a layer of cement everything was heavy. Everything changed when my family walked through the door and told us the truth about what really happened.
He had a heart attack, and died in a field of wildflowers. That's important to me, because whenever we went on a backpacking trip, he would explain every single flower. He told me the scientific name and details of every flower, even if I was too young to understand. The earliest memory I have of him is of us picking a bunch of wild strawberries. We spent two hours on the side of the trail collecting and eating these strawberries. So for me, he died in a field of memories.
When my family and I walked into the I.C.U. unit in Flagstaff, Arizona that's what I was thinking, mixed with the feeling of goosebumps on my goosebumps. I walked into the dark, dingy room where my grandpa was and we greeted our family to prepare for the worst.
That was the first time I've ever seen my grandpa so helpless. Imagine a typical farmer, but times that by a few. He cared about his cows and his garden. He always wore the same holey brown shirt and dirty green flannel. It was really weird to see him not wearing those stereotypical grandpa clothes. You know, people always say that what you wear describes your personality? That was definitely true about him. He wasn't privileged, and he cared more about his family than his personal appearance. Not seeing him in those dirty clothes was like stripping a part of his personality away.
We were there for the next few days. In those few days he miraculously recovered, and we went back to our normal lives. We went back to Colorado, and he went back to farming in his dirty clothes. After some time he was feeling better, and so we decided to do another annual backpacking trip like we had done every year prior. Our family decided not to go on this one. I don't know why. There wasn't really a reason, which was kind of stupid.
The rest of the family went on the backpacking trip and I decided to hang out with one of my friends. I texted my parents and I asked them if I could have a sleepover and all they texted me was, “No you have to come home. Your grandpa is sick.”
As soon as I walked through the door, I knew that something was wrong. The first thing they told me was that my grandpa had died. You know when somebody dies, you are shocked and you never cry because you have no idea how to feel? I knew exactly how to feel. I cried for two hours straight and after that long I couldn’t cry any longer. I was making weird noises, but tears were no longer coming out of my bloodshot eyes. It's like my body ran out of water. After you cry for that long, your heart starts to hurt. My heart didn’t know where to put the overwhelming emotions, so it decided to burn slowly and fearfully out of my chest.
Looking back on it, I was kind of glad that we stayed home and didn't go on the backpacking trip. We made all of the food for everyone and prepared our house so that our family could come into a safe and comfortable environment after the tragedy. I think if we were on that backpacking trip it would have been a lot worse than it was.
For the entire time we were preparing food and making our home comfortable we all felt the same way. We all felt really sad, by this point things had settled down. Still, nothing felt normal. It was like moving in a layer of cement everything was heavy. Everything changed when my family walked through the door and told us the truth about what really happened.
He had a heart attack, and died in a field of wildflowers. That's important to me, because whenever we went on a backpacking trip, he would explain every single flower. He told me the scientific name and details of every flower, even if I was too young to understand. The earliest memory I have of him is of us picking a bunch of wild strawberries. We spent two hours on the side of the trail collecting and eating these strawberries. So for me, he died in a field of memories.