Have you ever had a family member die? Were you close to this person? Well, guess what, I have. And if you haven’t, have you ever wondered what it is like for other people that have had someone close die?

Here is my story. I had an uncle that I didn’t see much, but when we did we had a blast. I was really close to him. He was the nicest guy I have ever met. The thing I loved about him was he was never in a bad mood; he always had a great personality. His life was soccer. He loved that sport so much. Ever since he was little he and my mom would always play soccer together. They both could have been professionals but they were too busy. When I was about four I realized that I loved soccer too. My uncle taught me everything I know about soccer. After awhile I realized I was pretty good at soccer. He used to go to every one of my games. But then he had to work a lot because more people wanted him to do jobs. He quit going to my games but I still thanked him. He was my role model and still is.

My favorite memory of him was in the winter of 2001. My family and I went to his house to go snowboarding. I had so much fun there. That was the most amount of time I had ever spent with him. The first thing we did was build a snowman. Well, it didn’t turn out to be a good snowman so we decided to go snowboarding. I had never done that before, but he taught me that too. I didn’t do so well and then we went sledding, which got boring. Soon he had a great idea to tie a sled to his quad. He told me to get on the sled and then he started driving. It got dark and we went back to the house and made cookies and hot cocoa. That was the best day of my life.

The next day my uncle took me snowmobiling. That was an amazing day, too. I think that was a once in a life time opportunity to go snowmobiling with my uncle and spend time together. I will never forget that day.

The only other memory I have of him was in the summer of 2001. My uncle took me to Wild Waves with two of my cousins. He took me on so many rides that I almost threw up. But it was worth it. I think that day I saw the young kid that was still in him.

The week before we had plans to do something else, I was at my dad’s house. I was about to go to the movies when my mom arrived at the front door. She came in and sat down on the coach, I was so surprised because she never goes inside my dad’s house. She told me to have a seat. I didn’t know what was going on. With tears flowing out of her eyes she said “Tanner, I know this is going to be hard for you to hear, but your uncle died last night in a car wreck. He was driving home when he missed the turn to his street and he went off the road, flew out of the window, hit a rock and died”. I started crying hysterically when she sat down next to me and said, “It’s ok,” but I knew she didn’t mean it. I packed my stuff then and we had a long quiet ride to his house.

That night we went to my grandma’s because she was so sad and she didn’t want to be alone. We were there for about two weeks. Those two weeks were so hard. All I heard was pain behind people’s voices and all I saw were the fountain of tears coming from their eyes. I never witnessed anything as bad as that. I had never seen so many tears and pain. All we did was watch movies and sleep.

About a month later we had to go to the place where no one likes. Can you guess where that is? It’s called a funeral. That is the worst place you ever want to be. When I was there all I saw were a lot of people with tears and flowers. It was so sad because I heard nothing but good things from people about him. They told many sad stories about him. The hardest thing to do is watch old pictures of him. The part that made me cry the most was when they had to bury him in a big ditch. It was so hard to watch. I felt like my heart was going to stop. I cried so much I couldn’t cry any more. After that funeral, I didn’t go to school for about a month because I was so sad.

Whenever I see a picture of him I get really quiet and go outside to cry. I pray to him every night and I always will. I have never quit thinking about him. He will always be in my heart. I hope that you never have to go through this like I did.











The End.