On July 5th, 2005 my life took a drastic turn, my beloved grandmother’s death and her subsequent funeral a few days later. The funeral probably the saddest day of my life because it was the first funeral that I had attended. There were a lot of strangers there, probably friends of my grandmother or her family members from Ireland that I didn’t know. She had been sick for a few weeks and I went to see her as much as I could during that time. I remember when her body was at the funeral home. I had never been to a place that was filled with so much sadness before. I felt like at that moment, I had begun to realize that it really happened, that she had died.

Everybody was in such a somber mood because my grandmother meant so much to them all. Whenever anybody needed anything they would come to my grandmother for advice and guidance. She would give great guidance and would give you the best advice possible. Especially for me, when I was about 2 every day my grandmother would watch after me while my parents would go to work every day. She always had great patience with me and always gave me the best advice possible. I think the hardest part of that day was me trying to figure out how I would start to live my life without her because she had done so much for me for 15 years. I started to realize what she would miss, my 16^th birthday, my high school graduation, my college graduation, so many events she wouldn’t be there in person but she would be there in spirit. I feel to this day that the person I was on July 5th 2005 died, and a new me was born. I feel that I emerged from this by coming to my senses realizing that reality had struck me and I needed to move on. I also decided that day to live life by her standards and not do things she wouldn’t want me to do, I feel like that day, July 1^st 2005, I emerged from it as a better, more determined, and motivated person.