Hi there, my name is Taylor. I am 15 years old, 16 on October 18th. I have a Dad, two sisters, a St. Bernard, a Border collie, and a rabbit. We live in Durand, Michigan. Two years ago we had five family members, now we have four. My life is what you may call, sheltered.

On July 15th, 2000, I got blessed with a Dad and not long later a sister then another. On July 15th, 2009, it was my Mom and Dad’s 9 year anniversary. We had fun that day, but on July 19th, my Dad was at work, the girls were in bed, and my Mom and I were sitting in the computer room playing World of Warcraft. My Mom has been having problems sleeping for a while and took medicine for it. Within five to ten minutes she would fall asleep. Well, my Mom was having fun making me laugh so she kept staying up. My Mom would sit there, on the computer for a second and fall asleep so I would wake her up and make her move. About a minute later, I go into the kitchen and she is lying on the floor with Dozer, the St. Bernard, sleeping. By then it is like 1:00- 1:30 a.m., so I left her. About 3:00 rolls around and my Mom is still lying on the floor.

A few minutes pass by and I am still debating on going in and waking her up and moving her into the living room, but by then I heard my Dad pull in. By this point my heart is racing like a lightning bolt. I was getting ready to go lock the door and move her, but in my head I was moving but my body wasn’t. A second later my Dad walks in the door and I didn’t know what to do besides fake sleeping. As my Dad approaches the kitchen, he sees my Mom, shakes her, and she doesn’t wake up! He shakes her again, still no sign of waking up. So he does it one more time, shakes her and calls her name even louder, she finally gets up. My dad helps her up and asks if she was okay and why she was on the floor. My Mom says she was just tired and fell asleep while petting Dozer. My Dad starts to argue with my Mom and I can hear it. My dad then proceeds to tell her that she needs to get help, so he is going to call my grandma in the morning.
I finally got tired of listening to them argue, so I got up and said,” You know I can hear you, right and if you send my Mom away, then I am going with her.”
My Dad tells me to go back to bed and I said,” NO! I am not going to go back to bed!”
“Look at your Mom, she is shaking. Does she take medicine? Taylor does she? Tell me the truth; you are not going to get in trouble?”
“No, Dad, she does not.” I exclaim, but I was lying. I promised her I wouldn’t tell him and I am going to keep that promise.
He told me,” Okay, go to bed now and I will take your Mom to bed, too. Good night and I love you.” I ignored him and stomped upstairs. When I got upstairs, I grabbed a duffle bag and started packing my Mom and I’s clothes. An hour passed by and I crashed on the ground.

6 o’clock comes like it was two minutes later and I felt like something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to react to it, so I just fell back into a deep sleep. At 8:14, I wake up to sirens getting closer and closer when all of a sudden, they stop. I get up and go into the bat cave (master bedroom) where my sisters were. I ask,” Why are you guys in here?” Emily explains,” Because Dad told us to stay in here.” I go to the window and as I extend my head across a bunch of boxes to get a glance outside, I see an ambulance and two cops in my front yard. I freak out thinking my Dad called 911 because he said last night she needed help. I start screaming and throwing things, and all I can hear is Brookie saying in a scared voice,” What? What’s the matter, Sissy, why are you crying and throwing things?” After I slammed the door shut and almost broke it, I grabbed my sisters and hugged them like it would their last. My neighbor, Mrs. LaFave, comes upstairs, gives us all a hug and a kiss on the forehead, covers my sisters’ eyes, and starts walking us downstairs. As we headed downstairs, my Dad was holding up a big blanket covering the dining room so we wouldn’t see what was going on. Well I did! Behind the blanket was my Mom on the hard cold floor with paramedics all around her, driving needles into her arms and pumping her chest.

As we walked to my neighbor’s house all that went through my head was, “why?’ When we got into the house, they sat down while I stayed standing up, staring out the window. All of a sudden I turned around, raced out the door while Mrs. LaFave chased after me. I opened the back door of my house, slamming it into the wall, rushed upstairs and grabbed my Dad. He tried pulling me back but I yelled,” No! No Dad, you need to see this.” So I grabbed his arm and started heading upstairs to their room, lifted up their queen-sized mattress and underneath of it was four bottles of my Mom’s medicine she was taking. My Dad hesitated while reaching for the bottles. Once he had them in his hands, he gave me a huge hug, took me downstairs, gave them to the paramedics and walked me back next door. A little while passed by and finally the ambulance left.

My Dad comes over and gets us girls and takes us back home without saying a word. By the time we get to our house, there is already about thirty family members over and still more to come. About two or three hours pass and I still haven’t went inside, I just couldn’t stand to walk in. Not long later, my Grandpa (my Mom’s Dad) gets a call on our house phone. He comes out and tells my Dad,” Come on Steve, we have to go and identify the body.” I turned to someone I have never met before and said,” Doesn’t that mean she’s dead?” She replies and says,” Yes honey, I thought you knew.” I started balling my eyes again, grabbed a hold of her, and hugged her very tightly and wouldn’t let go.
As the day dies down, so does the people. After a very long, hard, stressful day, it was now just us four as a family now. Slowly, we all walked upstairs, quietly we went to our rooms, got our clothes and left. I went my Mom’s parents’ house while the girls and my Dad went to his Mom’s house. A long, slow, hard, tearful week passes and my Dad comes and gets me and we head back to our house. Going inside was the hardest thing for my Dad and I to do.