Emily's Essay

Below is an essay Emily wrote for her English class. The assignment is to write about "objects" that you own that define a significant moment in your life:


I’ve never taken the time to sit down and think about who I am or about things I carry that, in a way, tell about who I am. Sitting down and thinking about these things now makes me realize there aren’t a lot of tangible items that I can come up with to describe who I am. I’m an emotional person who tries to live in the moment, laugh really loud even if a joke isn’t that funny, sing along to songs I don’t know the lyrics to, and appreciate little things that make me smile. All of these things reside in me, not in a purse or a backpack I lug from here to there.
Memories upon memories fill my head. Trips to Disney World or simply to my backyard. Certain memories evoke specific emotions when called to the forefront of my mind. That’s when I run to my dresser and pick up my photo album. It’s small, and can only fit a total of about twenty pictures, but each picture can make me laugh, smile, or cry. Just by glancing at it, I’m immediately immersed in the smells, the sounds, the tastes, and the atmosphere I had experienced within the tiny piece of paper.
I keep the album on the dresser and pick it up on a day when I’m feeling down or just bored. Once it’s opened, I can flip to a random page and take one look at the picture and instantly transport myself back to that moment in time. . The picture here causes a totally different emotion to surface. It’s of my brother Bryant. It was taken at a house my family and I were renting back in 2008 after moving back to New Hampshire from Florida. The sun is shining, Bryant has a huge smile on his face, and my younger brother, Liam, is hanging off the back of the wheelchair trying to hide from the camera. I can’t help but become completely overwhelmed by tears from the stabbing pain in my chest. Closing my eyes, I can see myself running out the front door of the house around to the side where my father and two brothers were enjoying the warm day. My mother had instructed me to go outside and take pictures of them until she came out to join us. Bryant was doing doughnuts in his wheelchair with Liam on the back, so I turned the camera on and called their names. Bryant stopped and looked over at me, and I started to jump in order to get him to laugh for the picture.
This picture is both hard to look at, but at the same time easy. The first thing that comes to my mind when I look at it is that Bryant is gone, and is never coming back. That’s when the nearly suffocating sobs kick in and I want to collapse within myself for days. But then I start to think about the picture, about the events that led up to it. I can almost feel the warm spring breeze on my face as I ran over to Bryant and saw the joy in his eyes.
Crying is something I tend to do fairly often. Whether I’m really happy, devastatingly sad, or puzzled beyond belief, the tears are almost a guarantee. I’ve decided that whenever I experience any kind of heightened emotion my tear ducts feel as if they must react. So, I admit I am an emotional person. It’s just how I deal with things. It’s not the only way though. Ever since elementary school I have loved to write. Whether it’s a short story, a four lined poem, or a twenty page story in the works. Lately though, I’ve been doing a lot of journaling, mostly in order to organize my thoughts and get things off my chest.
I think I was becoming too comfortable with the way my life was going as of lately. Apparently whenever one gets too comfortable with life, something needs to be changed. But I never could have anticipated a change of this kind of proportion. How can a person be there one day, and not the next? How could you give that person a hug, tell them you love them, and then wake up the next morning to an empty room? These were questions that were haunting me into all hours of the night weeks after my brother passed. The only way I was able to get any sleep at night was to write it all down.
“March 26, 2009- Another night. The days seem to be rolling by. I think I’m in even more of a shocked state than I was a few days ago. I didn’t cry yesterday or today, which in a way makes me feel guilty. But I feel too tired to cry. It’s as if I’m all dried out.”
That entry was written in a red journal I had purchased only a few weeks earlier at Barnes and Noble. There had been a light brown leather journal that I really wanted, but it was near $40, so I settled for the hard covered red one instead. During the first few weeks following my brother’s death I found myself turning to the journal to release any pent up feelings I was experiencing. I found it extremely difficult to speak to anyone about how I was feeling, especially my parents since they were directly involved, and I felt, and still do, that I had to remain strong and not let them know exactly how bad I was feeling inside.

Living in Florida had its advantages. We lived about and hour and a half away from the happiest place on earth: Disney World. The first time my family visited Disney was through Make a Wish, since Bryant was significantly disabled. He was about four years old, and I was around one. The experience was phenomenal for all of us, not that I can remember, but ever since that trip, we started traveling from New Hampshire to Florida to stay in Disney once every year.
So, as far back as I can remember, Disney has always been a part of my life. Most people I talk to about it who are either my age or older say that it’s “stupid” or “for babies”. I would have to disagree. Maybe it’s just me trying to stay as young as possible for as long as I can, but I am forever grateful to Bryant and Disney for teaching me that it’s OK to be a kid now and then, and to not conform to what everybody else says.
Since my family is still to this day Disney fanatics, we own nearly ever movie out there. My favorite is Beauty and the Beast. Before our move to Florida, we threw out all of our VHS tapes in order to eliminate some “stuff” we’d have to lug across thousands of miles. Once we returned home to New Hampshire, we slowly started to buy the Disney movies all over again, this time on DVD.
We finally got Beauty and the Beast, and the first time I watched it was the first time I had in almost a year. Even though I had seen it dozens upon dozens of times before this viewing of it, I found myself smiling throughout the whole movie as the story unfurled. Now I make sure that the DVD is safe in my room, always close at hand in case I ever feel the need to be a kid again.
Shortly after Bryant’s passing, I found myself doing a lot of thinking. Mostly about how I was going to remain who I was without him. If a random person were to see my family and me walking with Bryant out in public, they might’ve thought how sad the boy in the wheelchair was. But they were so wrong. Bryant loved life and lived each moment to the fullest. He didn’t care what people thought of him, all that mattered is that he was having the best time he could have. And if that meant blasting some Disney songs, it didn’t matter.
I’ve always said that I’m thankful for the things Bryant has taught me, especially the ability to laugh and just be myself. Now that he’s gone, I’m afraid that I’ll lose that care free attitude and the fearlessness to walk into the Disney store while my friends sit outside, refusing to go in. But I know as long as I think about him a lot, and never allow myself to let other people influence my beliefs, it’ll be OK.
My mother and I got matching necklaces that have a heart shaped locket on the chain. I put a picture of Bryant inside so that whenever I’m out and about or feeling all alone, I can open the locket or just touch it and remember all that he has taught me.
Thankfully my family is very close. Through all of the difficulties we’ve gone through in the past month or so we’ve all stuck together. My grandparents, aunt, and three cousins all drove up from Florida the week after Bryant died. It was so nice to have people in the house to fill the silence that was beginning to eat away at me. Jackie and I are only five months apart in age and have been really good friends since we were young. Having her with me during that week was so helpful. Just being able to lean on her shoulder and cry with her made the searing pain subside for a little while.
One day during her stay here, she informed me that she had got me a present. When I pulled a green stuffed frog from the bag a smile lit up my face. Jackie knew that things like this would cheer me up, since she was like me in the fact that she wasn’t afraid to be a kid every now and then. Even though the frog was small, and couldn’t erase the hurt and devastating loss I was experiencing, it made me smile. And that’s all I wanted. I was so sick of lying in bed for hours just thinking and thinking and crying so hard I thought my heart would explode inside my chest. This little gift, which now sits in my room, was able to take my mind off of everything being thrown at me just for a brief moment in time. But after all, life is made up of moments; tiny snippets of time that we hold onto for dear life when something happens that could possibly make the world crumble around us.
I’ve been trying to let the wounds heal from the heartbreak that my brother passing has brought about. Sometimes I go into his room and sit on his bed; in the same spot I had laid in only two months ago to watch Disney’s ‘Sword in the Stone’ with him. It feels almost impossible to come to terms with the fact that someone who means so much to you can be gone within the blink of an eye. Yet, even though my world has been turned upside down and shaken a few times, I think I’ve come out alright. I think I’ve realized, more so than ever, that life is not a paved road. Oftentimes it has many unexpected and unwanted twists and turns, and it doesn’t come with a map or a compass guaranteed to show the way. Instead friends, family, and other people we encounter in life some time or another, are provided in order to teach us and help us along the way. Bryant was a guide, a teacher, and my big brother, and now that he’s gone I have to pick up the pieces and try to get back on the road and keep going. But after looking at these six items, it becomes a little clearer as to how to regain my bearings. I know who I am, and Bryant helped me realize it, so if I keep making memories, writing, and being a kid, the road will go on.