I walked into my bedroom to change into my pajamas.

“Call 911!” my mom yelled frantically.

I called to her to ask why, but I was drowned out by my thoughts whirling around inside my head. In the back of my mind one thought lingered, but I didn’t want to face it. It had to be my dad.

I ran downstairs to go to my nana. I told her what was going on; we were both saying it was fine and that nothing would happen to him.

The ambulance came but I didn’t dare leave the comfort of my nana and the dogs. I wanted to shut myself out of the world, curl up, go to sleep, and never wake up.

Some time later, my aunt came to take me to the hospital. I had high hopes and I was laughing with my aunt. I got to the hospital and I was led into a small, dark, gloomy room. I saw my mom with swollen red eyes. My heart sank almost immediately. The wind was knocked out of me.

She broke the news to me between sobs, and that’s when I actually realized I had just lost my best friend.

It felt as if a dam had just broken loose. I kept crying and crying as I immersed myself in my mom’s arms. They told me that Nana was coming in with my aunt Kim. I tried to put on a brave face, but as soon as I saw her I started crying again. The rest of the night went on like this, until we went to see him. His cold, limp body just laying there. I wanted to shake him and tell him to wake up. How could he just leave me alone, with no goodbye, nothing.

After a long time we went home. I didn’t want to sleep in my bed ,so I slept on the couch while my mom waited for my grandma and aunt to arrive. I finally drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke it felt as if I could run upstairs and find my dad watching tv in bed. I soon realized what happened the night before. I stayed home from school;I didn’t want to face the kids. For the whole day I listened to my mom make phone calls and her crying with my family.

Now it was Wednesday, and my mom drove me to school. I was bombarded by friends as they hugged me and told me how they were sorry and felt really bad. Only so many hugs could comfort me. I was longing for a hug from my dad. All my teachers were buzzing around trying to comfort me, to understand. But, nobody could understand the pain I was going through. Somehow the news spread throughout the school. I began to notice people pointing at and whispering behind my back. I didn’t want it to be this way. It made so angry; I wanted to scream at them and tell them to stop it. My friends could only partly cheer me up. The counselors wisked me away from the comfort of my friends and I felt very sad in their bland, cold, gloomy room. I got frustrated at them because I didn’t want to talk about him! How could they do that to me after just one day. Didn’t they have any sympathy?

On Thursday I stayed home to be with my nana and Mom. There was a thick coat of sorrow lurking around our house. We got lots of food from neighbors and friends. I felt really unable to do anything. It felt as if they thought we weren’t capable of cooking or anything. I sat blankly during the day listening to my mom, aunt, and grandma making funeral arangements.

On Friday, I went to school, for I didn’t want to think about him. When I got there people were still whispering behind me. Teachers worrying and trying to make me feel better. The counselors took me from class and made me talk about my family and how we were doing. Everything in school was just a blur, from that day on I could never really focus in school as much as I used to. That day was also his funeral, so I was thinking about that a lot of the time.

We arrived at the funeral home an hour early for family time with my aunts, grandma, nana, cousins,uncles, and my mom. This seemed to take forever. For a long time the cousins and I sat in the chairs and didn’t talk or say anything. That is, until my grandma came over and told me that I should say my goodbyes now because now it would be the only time. That’s when I started to cry. I ran over to cousin Jenny and buried my head in her arms, until my mom came over. All my family got frustrated with Grandma because she kept bothering me. For most of the funeral I was in the lunchroom with my cousins. My old teachers even heard and came out to see me. All of my friends started to show up too, which made me really happy. They brought me stuffed animals and toys for comfort. We had lots of flowers around my father’s casket. I even had a bou
quet just for me. It had eleven pink roses for the eleven years of my life with him. Now it was time for my mom and me to say our last goodbyes. I saw him and he looked so peaceful. It looked as if we could lay him down on our couch and he would just be sleeping. We sat down on the front bench as the preist said a prayer and some words. I started to weep in tears at the same time as my mom. They closed the casket and I started to cry even more. When he was done saying some words, my friends came right to me and I was in the middle of fifteen friends. We were all crying together. It amazed me that they cared so much about my family and me. One of my friends said something that I will always remember, “Don’t Worry, we’ll make it through this,” Carly told me. That’s when I knew I had lost a best friend but gained a new best friend too.