I have never liked these kinds of days. The sky was dark and the air was cold. All of the trees were dead and all of the color from the shrubs and grass looks like it has been drained from the world. It’s days like this when I want to go back to bed and shut all of the windows, so that I cannot see the lifeless world outside in the early stages of a Michigan spring.

       I wake up all the same on these type of mornings, wake up in a bed that is too small, move a cat that’s too fat off of my bed, and go eat breakfast in a house thats too cold and small. The only hope I have on these days is that my parents are in a good mood. I’m not awake ten seconds before the sound of dishes smashing on the floor and the smell of burnt eggs punch the taste out of my mouth. My fears come to me as I look out from my door. All I see is a hallway , the bright yellow paint darkened by the bleak outside world coming through. Then a scream and then a shout, my fears come to reality.  I see my family’s torturing pain unfold before my eyes as my parents began to argue and yell from across the room at each other. Finally my mother screamed “get out” as he departed into the dimly lit basement. She began to roll her eyes as she also began to pick up the thrown pots and pans from the cold wood floor. I don’t know if my brother is awake or not, I hope not. He would just cause this situation to go more out of hand than it already is.

      You see my mom had been told by my father for many months to get a job. She had just gotten her masters degree in special education to teach children with special needs. At first he seemed pleased she had to work long hours and got paid extremely little for what she had to put up with. These sudden turn of events, but after about three or four weeks he began to realize that her job was a little more demanding that he first thought. She was prepared for this, he was not. He was a water operator in Holly, and was somewhat happy with his job. But lately he seemed to dread the fact that he had to go to work and see the people he saw everyday. We had suspected something was wrong at work, he had never been this angry at us for this long. Usually it all cleared up in a few days, but he had been this way for about a month in a half. We suspected why, but we didn't really know for sure.

      As I began to help my mom pick up the plates, I began to ask what was wrong. “Mom, what was all of that about”? “Nothing, just the usual”, she said with a far away look in her eyes. “ “Mom, I just want to know”, I said. “Zach”, she yelled back. “What mom, what are you gonna tell me, the same old stuff, that you guys are unhappy, that money is tight, or are you gonna say that you're sad about the dishes being smashed.” “Ralph has cancer”, she said as if she was lifting a weight off of her soul. My mind went blank as she said those words. Ralph was one of my dads best friends, like the father he never had growing up. Ralph was like santa claus, he was the most caring and the most heart filled person anyone had probably ever met.

        My heart suddenly dropped as I realized I had just made my mother tell me something she was trying to hide from me for a reason. I finally broke down and apologized. “So thats why dad has been acting the way he has”, I said. She nodded, not knowing what to say next. The sudden gray and dull world seemed to go away, the color from the past seemed to rush back to me. To a different time when I was much younger and when the people that seem like shadows to me now seemed so full of life and so full of personality.  My mind seemed to go in a  million miles in all directions, trying to put a round plug into a square hole. “Wow”, I finally thought. “Wow that one man’s life touches so many other lives, and when the shock that they may be gone forever comes to reality”, the true shock hits you. “Wow to the fact that I was just sitting in bed dreaming of when all people I knew seemed so carefree and innocent, and now that I have woke up from my sleep, I now see that some things should just remain dreams”. Trying to grasp the fact that at first my dad seemed like the jerk, but finally the two wires clicked together and I realized that I was the jerk for acting so ignorant and not realizing that something was wrong and that he needed support through this rough time. I don’t blame him for acting the way he has been acting, I could only think I would act the same way if I was put through this.  The reality that he may or may not recover from cancer loomed in my head as I somehow made my way to the basement stairs.

          The walk down the stairs seemed like walking through the garden of Eden, an experience that I still will never forget.“I’m sorry about Ralph” I said with my voice barely forming the words themselves. He got up from his computer chair slowly. I was expecting him to yell or just ignore me. But instead he hugged me and tears let out all of the frustration he had built up from the following weeks.

       I put together all of the events just then that led up to this moment. Life brought this on, an ongoing struggle between good and bad. Of mice and men, and of Life and Death. The tears let out what life brought onto Ralph and what his pain brought onto not only himself, but the people he had connected with in his life. One thing I see in the world now is not the dark and gloomy outlook that I had gotten used to, but a life that can shine through the clouds and show all of us that we could have hope and promise if we really want it, we just have to make the best out of what we got. Much like the rainy day, with its ice cold wind that could crack stones, and the unforgiving gray sky. And much like Ralph, who had made the most of life with the short amount of time he had on this Earth. For all of us and for him, the action of sadness struck us, not of the flesh, but of the mind and soul.