This I Believe by McKenna R.
On January 17th, I spent the night at my friend's house. We stayed up all night and I had
church the next day but I ended up not going because I was too tired to wake up.
I was still sleeping, and around 10:30, my phone was being blown up by texts, and I
ignored it at first because I assumed it was either my mom and grandma yelling at me for not
being home to go to church. Then I heard my phone ringing and when I looked and it was my
mom and she wouldn’t have called me if it wasn’t something serious. I answered the phone and
she said, “Johnny died, you need to come home now.”
I didn’t comprehend what she said right away but I grabbed all of my stuff and got in my car and
started driving home. I was trying my best to rush and I even ended up leaving some of my stuff
at her house.
Johnny was my cousin; he was in his 40’s, but he was always in and out of our lives so I
wasn’t very close with him. But if you ask anybody they would tell you that he was one of the
best people they’ve ever met. His son is the baby of the family, he is so spoiled and even when
he is bad he gets away with it.
At that moment, after my mom told me that he died, I was shocked. It was hard to
believe at first. We have never had a close death in our family until then.
I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I look back and wonder why Johnny and I weren’t that close.
Regardless of if he was in and out of all of our lives a lot, I could have done more to try and be
closer to him. But you never think that someone is going to die so young and so soon. When I
was little Johnny was definitely around more than when I was growing up.
I believe that you need to appreciate your friends and family because you never know
when something can happen to them or else you might regret it. I wish I would have gone over
and visited more, talked to him more, and just hung around him and the family more. There is
nothing I can do about it now but I can try and change that for the future. It is such an awful
feeling when someone dies and you had the choice to be close to them and you didn't try
because you had ¨more important things¨ to do. Just try and be there for your friends and family
as much as you can because you never know when it'll be your last time seeing them.
