My Father's Fight With Lymphoma Cancer

For this assignment we were asked to write a memoir about a significant event in our life. We were graded on our ability to create an engaging opening, write a powerful storyline with a complex self-awareness, and create a piece with a clear beginning, middle, and end. It was expected that we followed MLA format and at least two pages long. For my memoir I wrote about a time I injured myself. I think the main purpose of the assignment was to get us to think about how events in our life impacted who we are today. It was also meant to encourage us to analyze how we reacted to a certain situation and why we reacted in the way we did. Overall it was meant to help us analyze who we are as a person and better understand how we came to be that

Cancer. Six simple letters forming the most complex word a seven-year-old could ever comprehend. I couldn’t even spell it, let alone know what it meant. All I knew was that it was killing my father. I had lost my grandmother and both grandfathers by that time. Loss was something I had already grasped. My dad was dying and the one person in my family that I really needed, my brother, was off deployed across the world. It was incredibly difficult to not have him around during this time and everything was going downhill faster than the speed of sound.

On January 3, 2009 around 11:00 PM the phone rang with what I thought was exciting news about my newly born sister, Tristyn ,but quickly turned to horror. I could heard the fright in my dad's shaken voice as he told me Tristyn had to go into immediate heart surgery because she needed a stent to open up the blood flow to her heart. Being eight at the time the only thing I could think about was how she might not make it. My dad said to me “look after your sisters, and tell them nothing about the surgery”, which terrified me more than before. I knew I needed to be brave and take charge of the situations for my sisters. Bravery is something I learned for a situation I never knew would happen.

One of the constraints that effected the quality of this paper was the fact that the story was written five years after I experienced this amazing moment in my life. As a result of the time difference, small details were forgotten resulting in a lacking story. At the time, I was filled with emotion. Yet, with so many years between the experience and the time the story was actually written down, the exact emotions I felt at the time of the event were forgotten. Well written papers tend to have emotion laced throughout them. If I would have written the story right after it happened I know there would have been more feeling and details put in to the story that got forgotten over the years. Another constraint was the time allowed to write the paper. There was not enough time to dive in and process the story in the depth that would have made it a better paper. If more time would have been allowed I could have had more time to think about the moment when the amazing experience happened. By bringing up the old feelings felt in the moment, it would have allowed me to really thinking about what was being written

The story of my history as a writer is a very long one. My writing has come full circle. I have changed very much throughout the years, both as I grew older and as I discovered more aspects of my own personality. The growth that I see when I look back is incredible, and it all seems to revolve around my emotions. I have always been a very emotional girl who feels things keenly. All of my truly memorable writing, looking back, has come from experiences that struck a chord with my developing self. This assignment has opened my eyes, despite my initial difficulty in writing it. When I was asked to write down my earliest memory of writing, at first I drew a blank. All of a sudden, it became very clear to me, probably because it had some

This personal story project was very difficult for me. Every time I wrote a new sentence I would question whether I should keep the topic or not. I would question if this story even told anything significant at all about me. But I realized it really does tell a big portion of my life. This piece is very personal to me in describing who I am and why I am like this as a person. It is mainly about how my fathers and my brothers’ addiction has shaped my life. It is about how their addictions impact my life and my previous (and present) experiences. But in the end, it made me a stronger person. It made me more independent. If I told any other story, my fellow classmates, the audience, would not take anything away from it. To them, I feel as though I would still be the same, quirky Bella. This truly shows another side of me.

The most significant challenge I’ve faced is losing my dad to leukemia in 2012. Many complications followed, such as losing legal guardianship from my mom, which required my four sisters and I to take care of ourselves. My dad was an anchor for the family and tried to provide the best he could. Although his passing tore my family apart, my academics never ceased. I recognized myself as a disciplined individual who never gave up because I know my dad would not expect that. He made sure our homework was done, the house was clean, and our grades were maintained in order to go out. He raised my sisters and me to never settle for less and to push above our expectations. My dad always reminded us that we could accomplish anything we wanted with determination.

My grandfather was diagnosed with bone cancer about a year and a half ago. When I found out, it was hard to comprehend that I was going to have to see my grandfather become weak and small because of the lack of appetite from the chemotherapy. Days and weeks would pass and there was a bit of hope that led me to think he was fighting this cancer, but I was wrong. September of 2015 my grandfather passed

When I turned 11-years-old my whole childhood began to change my life went from being perfect to everything but perfect. One day I came home to hear the news my father, my best friend; my hero was diagnosed with stage 3 colon cancer. Not knowing the struggle my family was about to take on I just began to cry. I had a million things running through my head what’s going to happen? Will everything be okay? Why him? What is going to happen? With all these things rushing through my head all I could do was cry not knowing this was least worse to come.

The loss of my younger brother changed my life in ways that I couldn't have imagined at the time of his death, but I was bombarded with so many emotions and undertakings that deeply impaired my thought process.

Why did I choose to write about my dad’s diagnosis? At first, it was because this was the most important thing that had ever happened in my life. But once I began to explore this topic, I realized that the moment of my dad’s diagnosis had defined my life ever since. This moment made me who I am today.

Fast forward to 8th grade English class, and my teacher told us we had to write a memoir about a moment in our life that scared us. Since I had many of those moments all throughout my life, I didn 't know which one to pick. I didn 't decide what I was doing until the day before it was due when I sat down at my grandmas computer to type and print my assignment. I contemplated writing about all of my near death experiences, but settled on something else.I decided to write about the one thing that changed my life forever and that still haunted me to the very day and every moment. The topic, as you can guess, was my father.

My father passed away in 1991, two weeks before Christmas. I was 25 at the time but until then I had not grown up. I was still an ignorant youth that only cared about finding the next party. My role model was now gone, forcing me to reevaluate the direction my life was heading. I needed to reexamine some of the lessons he taught me through the years.

When I was 17 years old, my father was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Without a doubt it was an event which marked my life and helped me mature in many aspects. I witnessed how my father began to lose his cognitive functions like his ability to focus, changes in his personality, behavior and emotions. This was the first time that I felt interested in learning how the brain process the information and motivated to learn more regarding this disease in order to help him. After my father passed away, my mother fell into a depression so I began to search for ways to improve her emotional state by reading books and magazines on the subject.

The two cable cars are going to and fro, loading and unloading scores of tourists. In front of the control panel, two little boys are watching the buttons and lights in amazement. Today is a special day for Curt Carrigan, as his two grandsons are visiting him at his workplace.