The Year that Changed My Family Forever

Change is when something happens in your life and from that moment on nothing will be the same ever again. You don’t notice changes until you go back to an old place that you have memories before the change occurred. Going back to these places can either fill you with sadness because it reminds you of what you lost. Or it can fill you with happiness because it can remind you that there is always a place that hasn’t been affected by the change. It all depends on what has changed.

For my family and me what has changed is my family members. Three years ago we lost my uncle and grandparents. After that devastating year nothing has ever been the same since. There is always something missing, a hole that no one can fill, that is always there, that can never be replaced. Sometimes you can forget about this hole, but it always comes back to you later on.

This summer my remaining family has decided to go back to our family holiday home near the beach. After a long 5 hour car journey we reach the old house. On entering the driveway, I look around, everything has changed.

The kiwi trees have entwined branches and grown to create a roof over the wooden frame that acted as the garage. There is a thick layer of dirt over the once dark red floor tiles outside. The once white table and chairs now are brown even though they have been underneath a roof to shield them. The once neatly kept farmland, now looks like an abandoned piece of land with weeds and overgrown plants everywhere. All the plants on the balcony have withered and died away. The houses looks unwelcoming, all the blinds are tightly shut, the house has gone from a white colour to grey. The only thing that looks the same is the well, but the well signifies death for this fa...

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...le and gave him two years to live. Uncle didn’t even try chemotherapy. But the cancer spread faster than anticipated, and within one year he passed away. I was at school when he died, I remember having lunch with my friends when my teary eyed mother walked in and asked me to come with her, just by looking at her face i immediately knew.

Grandmother sitting in her room, watching TV and knitting, while aunt stayed in the kitchen cooking and cleaning up. With grandfather walking around outside and staying in the farmland picking out ripe fruits and vegetable for dinner, and uncle sitting in his blue chair and staring at the sky. This was all the past, this was before our lives changed, before our family members were taken from us.

Now it is up to us to decide what we are going to do, and it is up to us to create new memories and fill the hole within ourselves.