At Nanny’s house, she and I started preparing for the barbeque. We took out the plastic cups, plates and silverware, and emptied the fridge of hot dogs, hamburgers and cheese. Then, we went outside on the patio and started cooking. As the food finished cooking, the rest of our family began to arrive. We ate hot dogs, hamburgers, corn, watermelon, garden and chicken salad, deviled eggs and ice cream cake.
After we finished eating, the adults had drinks and held an “adult conversation”, and the kids ran around the yard playing freeze tag. Unlike everyone else, I was inside watching Law & Order: SVU. When the show went to commercial break, I would play on my Gameboy. After a while, Uncle Stephan, my godfather, needed to leave because he lived in queens and it was getting late. My dad offered to give him a ride and Uncle Michael decided he would go with them. Dad ran inside to give me a hug and a kiss before he left. He said, “I’ll see you at home, I love you.” He stayed a few seconds longer than usual, as if he knew it was that time, then he left. That night, I had a dream that Dad was on his way home to me. He was almost here and he didn’t want to miss saying goodnight to me, so he was speeding. As he came around the bend on the highway, he got into an accident with a tractor trailer. He was laying there on the pavement, lifeless, and then, I woke up. I ran into my parents’ room to wake up my mom and tell her about the bad dream, but she was already awake, on the phone with the police, and tears were running down her cheeks. Finally, she hung up the phone, gathered herself together, and turned to me and said the most horrific news i’ve ever heard in my entire life: “He’s …show more content…
I still hadn’t quite figured out that he was really gone. I waited at the door till I had to eat or use the bathroom, and then returned to sitting on the floor. Eventually it got to the point where everything began to sink in and by that time, I had already run out of tears to cry. Instead, I was angry; I was mad at my mom for letting him ride a motorcycle, at myself for letting him leave, at him for dying without me knowing it was going to be the last time I would see him alive, and at God for taking away the only person who knew all of my secrets. My older brother, younger sister and I were the only ones who really understood what was going on. My mom was handling everything privately and was constantly kicking us out of her room because it was none of our business. So I went to bed