Was there ever a day where everything was sad but everything was going by so fast that your emotions couldn’t catch up? 2nd grade was one of the hardest years of my life.

In my classroom, I remember my teacher answering the phone. She hung up and looked at me. Her face had a serious, yet compassionate look; as if she could feel my emotions inside of me and was already trying to comfort them. Then she said, “ Go ahead and head to the office, your parents are picking you up early today.”

The week before, I had found out that my grandpa had passed away a week or two before that day. But at first I didn’t know what was happening. I remember walking to my cubby to grab my light pink with blue and purple polka-dotted backpack to head to the office. The walk to the office was quiet other than the occasional murmur from the other classrooms that I passed. Listening to the sound of my uniformed black velcro Sketchers patting against the tile. Looking down at my shoes the only thing to think about was what was going to happen next. I waited about one to two minutes before my parents came. Standing and waiting to go home. It could have been my young mind, or just everything went by so fast; from walking through the halls, to waiting by the doors for my parents to the car-ride home. It just all was a blur.

But the next thing I knew, I was on American Airlines, on my way to Tennessee, watching a movie on a little tv. Doing my best not to slouch and rest my feet on the seat in front of me. We stayed at my grandma’s for about a week until the funeral. At the funeral, my brain had not fully wrapped around the fact that my grandpa was dead. During the funeral my 2 year old second cousin and I were playing together and laughing silently while friends and family behind us were all wiping tears from their faces and blowing their noses. When the funeral was done the pastor announced the burial was going to take place in about an hour. And that we could stay and watch if we would like to. I am not sure anyone did because of all the emotions that would overcome them if they did. After the burial, we went to a military veterans graveyard; where they folded a flag and gave one to my grandma, both my dad’s sisters, and my dad.