Grieving

A/N: As I was writing this I had it in my mind that the narrow subject is my brother and his

death, and the larger subject is actually about moving forward after death. I have spent several

hours brainstorming different ideas and directions for this essay. The grey highlighted areas are

parts that I am fairly confident will be in the final product after editing and revising. Some of the

others are possible details/scenes,

Grieving

INTRODUCTION: or passages I am just unsure of at this point.

- My brother was born with a severe brain malformation called semi-lobar holoprosencephaly.

- He was wheelchair bound, used a feeding tube, and was unable to talk.

- Regardless of these limitations, he lived life to the fullest

- Growing up I had always know that my brother was different.

- He always got better. I always knew that him dying was a possibility, but it never seemed

like it would really happen.

1) Talk about our relationship

- My brother was almost two years older than me.

- There was none of the typical bickering that comes with a lot of siblings. Our relationship

was great.

- When I was younger I would get up early on weekends and crawl into his bed so we could

watch cartoons together.

- As we got older our dynamic changed. I realized that for all intents and purposes I was his

big sister, and with that knowledge I took it upon myself to be his protector. Whenever

people asked what was wrong with him, or tried to make fun of him, I would defend him.

- He was on the special needs team at our cheer gym, and I was his helper. I pushed him

around on stage and helped take care of him.

2) Describe how being his sister influenced me

- Having a sibling with such a severe disability, I learned things very early on most children do

not such as occupying myself, operating medical machinery, and navigating a hospital.

- Our family would often go to Disney World on vacation because it was more wheelchair

friendly. Brandon loved Winnie the Pooh. I remember how his eyes would light up and he

would laugh with joy when we encountered him at the parks.

3) Explain how he always bounced back

When I was in fifth grade, Brandon had to be taken to the hospital. I dont even remember

why, I just know that it was in October, and he was there for a month. Even with the extended

stay I wasnt too worried. I was scared in the sense that one is when someone they love is sick,

but I wasnt worried that the worse would come to pass. Brandon had been through hell, but he

always bounced back. He always got better. He came home in November, and I remember

feeling happy and relieved. It only took a week for something to cause his return to the hospital.

Even as Thanksgiving and my birthday passed with Brandon still hospitalized, I still expected

him to bounce back just like always. Eventually he got better and was discharged. He made it

home the day before Christmas Eve, and it was the best gift I could have ever asked for. Things

were going fine after that. In January we celebrated his 13th birthday something doctors said

would never come and life continued. It wasnt until March when everything went wrong. My
mom and I were in Orlando for UCA, a competition hosted at ESPN Wide World of Sports. My

team had won earlier that day and we had went to the parks to celebrate. It was during this

celebration when my mom received the call from Brandons school saying that he had been

rushed to the hospital. My mom told me we had to leave immediately, and go home. Everything

that happened between then and getting on the road is a blur, but one thing I remember clearly is

the searing hatred I felt for Disney World. We were in the happiest place on earth and my

world was falling apart. It didnt matter that I had made so many great memories at Disney, I

could only see it as the place where the very foundation of my world was shaken.

After his birthday had passed I thought we were in the clear. I had truly believed that

everything would go back to normal and that everything would be okay. My dad was deployed,

my mom and I were 7 hours away from home, and my brother was lying in a hospital bed for

reasons unknown.

4) When I found out he died

- My mom came and picked me up from school. As we were walking to the car she told me

that Brandon had that morning.

- I tried to cry because that was what I thought I was supposed to do.

- I expected the world to tilt and for everything to fall apart, but nothing happened. I didnt feel

any different from usual. The birds kept chirping, grass kept growing, and I still had

homework due the next day.

- His funeral came and went, and life went on.

- It wasnt until 3 months after he had died that I finally reacted.

5) Realizing he wasnt coming back

 (MOMENT) It was just another day during summer break nothing particularly special

about it. As I was running around my house I passed Brandons room, and for a brief moment I

thought I saw him. He looked the same way he had before he had started to get sick, in his

wheelchair, laughing at some show on his TV. This image in my mind, I ran back expecting him

to be there, only to be greeted by an empty room. In that moment it hit me that my brother was

gone, and that he wasnt coming back.

6) Reaction

To say that I started crying would be an understatement. What I did could more aptly be

describe as gross sobbing. It felt as if someone had punched a hole in my chest. I lied in his bed

the same bed I has snuck into for so many years for morning cartoons and I mourned. I once

read that saying ones heart has been crushed is more accurate than saying it has been broken.

The reasoning behind it was that once something is crushed there is little one can do to repair it,

while broken implies that it can still be fixed. My heart was crushed. It felt as though my body

was too small to contain the amount of pain and misery I felt.

7) Explain My Reaction

8) Moving Forward

I loved my brother with everything I had. The pain never goes away. I always feel a

hollowness in my chest that cant be filled. It has gotten easier though. Now I can say that my

brother died without feeling like Im falling apart at the seams. I can tell stories and

remember him without feeling like crying. However, sometimes the sadness sneaks up on

me.
 Once I was driving home from class at Kennesaw State when I thought of him and tears

began to roll down my face. Nothing had happened to cause it, but the pain and grief came flying

back to me full force.

Another time was a few days after when his birthday was. I listened to a song called

Amelia and the lyrics were so familiar and resonated with me so much that I ended up curled

up in a bathroom crying uncontrollably.

It has happened on more than one occasion at a competition. My brother was a part of our

cheer gyms special needs team. He loved cheer more than anything, so when I see a special

needs team with kid all having the time of their lives performing, I remember that Brandon will

never compete again

One of the worst occasions was when we were copying vocabulary during my Sports

Medicine class. Everything was fine until I saw the word prosencephaly in our textbook. My

brother had a severe brain malformation called semilobar holoprosencephaly. I remember feeling

chest tighten and my breathing becoming faster and shallower. When the word started blurring in

from of my eyes, I left the classroom and went to the bathroom. Once I had locked myself in a

stall, I began to cry. Biting my lip and covering my mouth so that no one would hear. I had

always known Brandon had holoprosencephaly, but to see it in a textbook so clinically defined

caused me to breakdown.

CONCLUSION:

I doubt that the grief will ever go away, but Im okay with that. Because in my eyes, to

stop grieving and missing him is the same as forgetting about him. Despite the fact that by all

accounts I was essentially his big sister, he was my big brother. I loved him, I lost him, and now
I have to live with that. My world changed when he died, but it did not end. The Earth keeps

spinning, time goes on, and so do I. As much as I may wish for everything to stop, to just lie in

bed and not have to keep moving forward, I know that that is no way to live my life. I have to

move forward because he cannot.

Feels Great
A/N: In addition to what I started off with, I have created some scenes and dialogue I want to
incorporate into my essay.

Feels Great

I could have chosen to not compete. I could have allowed the pain and uncertainty to scare me
into taking the safer and probably smarter route. No one would blame me if I said I couldnt
do it. Over and over again, one after another, people would approach me and ask how my wrist
felt, and while the concern was appreciated, it made it increasingly more difficult to distract
myself from my injury. With each question and worried glance I felt my confidence wavering. It
was obvious that my wrist was not in as good shape as I was pretending. Anyone could see the
evidence of the injury by the disturbing way my hand hung limply as I clutched my arm to my
chest. Yet every time a question was posed, or I was given a gentle hug and words of comfort, I
would give a thumb up and say, Feels great. Feels great. Feels great. Feels great. I honestly
cant remember how many times I said those two words to reassure others while thinking to
myself that what I was about to do was dangerous and inadvisable.

I headed into warm-ups armed with ibuprofen and athletic tape. When a stunt came down the
wrong way, sending searing pain throughout my arm and causing tears to fill my eyes, I still said
I felt great. Throughout the team warm-up, I smiled, cracked jokes and acted as if nothing was
wrong. I saw the looks of concern from my stunt group and told them that so long as everyone
did their job, we would be fine. I wrapped another layer of athletic tape around the already
throbbing, swollen mass that was my left hand. One last check in from the coaches on how I was
doing. Feels great. The truth was that an inkling of self-doubt had begun to creep into my
brain. For a brief moment, I questioned my judgement and ability to be rational considering the
pain I was hiding from everyone.

The arena was at maximum capacity, filled with fans that came from around the world to see the
best of the best compete at arguably the most prestigious competition of the year. The announcer
called my team to the floor. It was now or never. I took my spot on the floor beneath the flashing
lights and focused on the roar of the cheering crowd. Deep breath in, the music starts, and for
two minutes and thirty seconds I give my all, fueled by adrenaline and sheer willpower. I did my
job, hitting my stunts and executing each skill exactly as I was supposed to. As I walked off the
floor and exited the arena, singing along to Panic! At the Discos Victorious, I realized that I
really did feel great. My wrist was pulsing violently and my hand was a purple, but I felt great.

It was an epiphany of sorts for me. Instead of succumbing to the pain and doubt, I found a way to
overcome it. I put faith in my abilities as an athlete and overcame my fears through pure
determination. I discovered that my strength was more than just physical, that it came from deep
within me as well. I also found something I hadnt even known I was looking for, and that was
the confidence and knowledge that whatever the circumstances may be, I possess the strength
and tenacity accomplish anything I set my mind to.

Narrow Subject: Going to Dallas with my broken wrist

In that moment it dawned on me. They didnt believe I could do it. Their doubt had nothing to do with
my injury, it was simply the fact that they didnt trust me. I was never close with my teammates, our
personalities clashed and they always saw me as odd. Even with all our differences, I had thought that
they trusted me to do my job. Turns out that they didnt. At first I was hurt. It hurt that these people
my team didnt believe in me and my abilities.
Dialogue (Each line of dialogue should be indented like a new paragraph)

- Maia approached me in the warm up room as the rest of our team started tumbling.
- Hey Gill, howre you doing?
- Anxious, overwhelmed, stressed beyond belief. Im fine.
- Hows your wrist?
- It hurts, its throbbing and turning and a disturbing shade of purple. Feels great.
- Thats good.
- It was good. As long as I could act like everything was fine, no one would realize just how bad the
situation was. No one would realize that the only thing keeping my hand in an upright position was
the copious amounts of tape I had wrapped it with.
- Ms. Brandie, Ms. Gina, Ms. Joy. They all asked the same question, Whos competing for you?
- No one. Im competing.
- Shock, awe, dubiousness, confusion. Are you serious? Thats insane. What the heck, Gill?
- Hey so I need you to make sure youre using a squeeze ball to keep those muscles from tightening
up.
- Okay Rog.
- I also need you to stretch it out and make an ice bath for it tonight.
- Okay Rog.
- You also need to do some pushups.
- What. The. Hell. The instructions I was given from the doctor was to leave my arm in the splint for a
week. I wasnt supposed to take the splint off let alone start doing pushups on my freshly injured
wrist. All I could do was stare at my coach because in all my 13 years of cheering, I had never heard
such a ridiculous request.
- I screamed. We had reached the stunt sequence and I had thought I was prepared for it. I was
wrong. As soon as Brittany was in the teddy bear, and all her weight was rested in my hands, I
started screaming. I screamed through the double up, tick tocks, burdle, flip, and the double down.
To this day, if you ask Brittany about that day, she will just talk about how she heard me screaming
through the entire stunt.

Setting/Atmosphere

- Our team had reached the tumbling portion of warmups.

- I could feel my heartbeat in my hand, it throbbed to the beat of pounding feet on the mat.
- Bright lights, concrete floors, glitter, hairspray
- Fluorescent lighting glinted of the hard concrete floors.
- The smell of hairspray and sweat was in the air.
- We were practicing outside in a grassy area near the hotel parking lot.
- Other guest stared as they passed.
- We brought the stunt down and my flyer said, I dont know. Something feels different.
- My only thought after she said that was, No shit Britt! Its broken!
- She folded down into the burdle and the force of it ripped her leg from my hand.