Gone, but Never Forgotten

Today for religion class, I had to write a "gospel" about someone close to me. I thought long and hard about who it should be about and I settled on the choice of my grandfather. He died when I was 12 and I miss him more and more as time goes by. I was very close to him and when he died I lost someone I loved very much. He was the first person close to me that died and his death hit me hard. He was very sick for some time but no one is ever really prepared for some one's death. When I first heard that he had passed away I was home and had a lot of my friends here. Normally I don't feel comfortable crying in front of people but that day I didn't care; I cried and cried for hours and I let them all comfort me. It was nice having my friends there to comfort me but they didn't understand what I was going through. Who I really needed to be with was my family. So that night we traveled up to Vermont. That week was one of the saddest weeks on of my life. I cried for hours and hours, not caring who saw. He was my only grandparent that I was ever really close to. The only grandparent I had ever really connected with. He meant the world to me. My cousins were there for me and I was grateful for that but what I really needed was to figure out how to cope on my own. That week was also one of the greatest weeks of my life, because my family was all together. We all live in different parts of the country and it was nice to have them all there at a time like that. We laughed, we cried, we talked. It was a different experience for me than I had ever thought it could be. I thought that being a time of mourning people wouldn't want to talk and laugh, but on the contrary, they wanted to do it more. They wanted to laugh and remember, and we did. It was nice, I felt like it helped me cope better with his death. It made me realize that him dying didn't have to be all sad because we still had the memories from when he was with us. I thank my family for being me in that time of need. They really stuck by me and I am eternally grateful. I still miss my Grandpa Mac more than anything and I would do anything to have him be alive to see me grow up. He always said that he wanted to see all of his grandchildren graduate high school. Sadly he didn't get his wish, but he did get to experience so much more with us and I know that the day I graduate he'll be watching down from heaven. He was my hero when he was alive and he is my hero now. I'll never forget him and I'll let him live on through my memories.