Drew Gladstone was my nephew. My sister, Tammy, is fifteen years younger than me.  My children were much older and so it was nice to have babies around again when Tammy had her children.  I loved them like they were my own.

When I think back, I would never have believed that Drew would have the slightest thoughts of taking his own life.  He was funny.  He could always make us laugh.  He was serious when he needed to be.  He was smart.  He loved sports.  He played football until his knees were in such bad shape that he couldn’t play anymore.  He was never lazy.  He would work harder than anyone his age I had ever seen.

He always helped my mom with her yard because she was elderly and needed the help.  She couldn’t pay him.  He did it because he loved her; she was his G-ma as he called her.  Smitty, my husband, hired Drew every year because he was such a great help with our yard, opening and maintaining our pool throughout the summer.  Smitty depended on Drew because he knew he could.  He was always involved in our lives in one way or another.  He also had a job at Zaxby’s.  He was in school at Athens Tech.  Why do I say all these things?  Because he was a typical young man.  He had goals.  He had plans.

I think the hardest thing for me was that my little sister had lost her son and I didn’t know how to help her.

I knew what I was feeling and it hurt so badly, but this was her baby and I knew she hurt so much worse.  I went to some doctor’s appointments with her and to meetings at Nuci’s Space with her, but that seemed so small.  I prayed for her.  I found out that my sister is a very strong person.

She will tell you she isn’t, but what I saw was strength. She made herself do so many things when I knew it would have been easier for her to stay home.  Shortly after Drew died, a friend also lost her child to suicide.  I debated and debated about going to the funeral home and I just didn’t think I could do it.  I didn’t go, but I found out later that Tammy went to the funeral home and spoke with the family.  I can only imagine how hard that was for her. I was so proud of her for that and I know it meant a lot to that family as well.

Drew will be in our hearts forever. It has been over four years now since he died and we still miss him dearly.  All holidays and other family get-togethers, we think of him.  Every year when we open the pool, we think of him.  So many times just in normal conversation, he comes up.  Why he made the decision he did, we may never know.

We do know the pain and emptiness suicide leaves.  Our hope and prayer is to help others avoid this pain and emptiness in their lives.  “Life is a precious gift.  Once shared, it will never be forgotten.

There are some people that are put into your life that are meant to change the path of your existence forever. For me, that person was my grandmother.

Ever since I can remember, going to my grandmother’s house was always such a special treat, even though she only lived about an hour plus some change away in Toccoa, Georgia and we went to visit pretty frequently when I was a child. Toccoa is a super small town: in 2000, the population was 9,323 people. In a place like that, everything seems charming and traditional and somehow just right (and I was thinking that even when I was tiny).

My grandmother seemed to know everyone in the town, and always treated people she knew and had just met with the exact same kindness.

She was the funniest, most thoughtful, most beautiful woman I could have ever wanted to have in my life: so when she passed away in 2014, I was absolutely devastated, and I couldn’t really come to terms with it. She had just been driving a few months prior!

My grandmother was 91 when she passed away, and now that I look back on it, I think that it was so hard for me to accept that she had died because she had been alive for so long and had so many great stories to tell and had touched so many lives that she seemed like an immortal being.

Ultimately, my grandmother passed away from cancer, and this led to my involvement with Relay for Life. My grandma was always very big on philanthropy and doing everything she could to change the world, so I joined with the mentality that she would have loved everything that Relay stood for.

But now that I am into my second semester of Relay, I can now say that I have found a family here.

My committee is only women, and they all feel like the sisters I never had. It’s amazing to think that every single one of us in that group has been touched by cancer either directly or indirectly, and that we all joined with the intent on spreading the word about standing up to cancer and helping in any way that we can to make other people’s lives that have been affected better.

I’m writing about my grandmother’s death as an important moment in my life because through a negative experience, I was able to learn about the positive ways to help people who are struggling with the illness of a loved one, regardless of if the loved one has cancer or not.

Because of my grandmother, I’ve learned that kindness and love are often both the best forms of medicine, and I hope that I am able to spread both through my involvement with Relay for Life.

I did not use to be a hopeless optimist.

In fact, I think I generally saw the glass as empty more than full, but through my past three years in college I have learned one monumentally important lesson – it CAN get worse. It can always be worse. I realize that doesn’t sound terribly optimistic, but once something so bad happens and you get through it, you realize that you can get through anything and that others have it much worse than you.

First semester of my junior year is one of my proudest so far, not necessarily because of accomplishments, or grades (although those are still stellar ~humble brag~) but really because I survived it. That semester was full of more challenges and grief and pain than I could ever have imagined.

We’ll start from the beginning – less than one week back into the school year I got a panicked phone call from my father telling me that my Grandmother was being taken to the hospital again and probably would never leave.

By the second weekend I was coming home for her funeral.

While not completely unexpected, as my grandmother had been sick, it was still sobering. It was one of the hardest times to be away from my family yet. Moving forward through the semester, things began to level out, I continued to power through my work, I planned philanthropy events for my sorority, I kept going.

The next shoe dropped by the end of September. I had been so sick for so long, and chalked it up to stress and lack of sleep, then I ended up having mono. I was so lucky it wasn’t so much worse, I had the back pain, the headaches, the tiredness, the persistent cold, all that. But I managed to not miss a single day of class while I was sick.

Keeping my head buried in books really got me through most everything. I got better; I went to a Mountain Weekend, conquered my first cooler and had the time of my life.

Again, things were looking up.

Quickly the holidays were approaching which for me means traveling up and down the east coast from Thanksgiving to New Year’s seeing every family member possible. I love it and I could not wait to start.

We were neck deep in our final project for the semester and everything imaginable was going wrong there, but it did not matter because as of Friday I would be on a plane to Florida to stay with my favorite cousin to celebrate her baby boy’s 3rd birthday!

The Monday before Thanksgiving break began, I got the worst phone call I hope I will ever get in my life. My cousin Holly had died that morning.

To give a brief backstory, Holly had been battling cervical cancer for years at this point. She was 28 and on her 5th relapse in 3 years. She barely had any working organs of her own. She was in and out of the hospital receiving platelets and blood transfusions to try and get her counts even close to high enough to continue her treatments.

Eventually her body just gave up. She left an incredibly strong husband, who is in the Coast Guard, and a little boy, who is a miracle in his own right. Born at 26 weeks, he now has cerebral palsy. All of them are incredible humans.

They are people you look at and think “how can they possibly go on?’ but that is the point, they do, they always did because they got to wake up every morning – period – the end – they were thankful for life. Holly and her family are my biggest inspiration.

While this was the worst news I could have received and I will never stop grieving for her, it changed me for the better. Because of their strength I found a new outlook and I refuse to ever go back. After all of that, I still managed to smile most days, to find something to be thankful for, to be a little more patient and a lot more forgiving.

In the end, life is too short to waste a single day on the negative. Make the most of every moment you are given.

It’s the fall of my sophomore year. I’m settled, feeling confident, and more ready than ever to start pumping up my resume with extracurricular activities.

I’m interested in health science, so when presented with the idea of joining Relay for Life at the University of Georgia, an organization that raises money to support the American Cancer Society, I said “sure, why not?” I knew it would look great to future employers and my great grandmother had cancer so it meant a lot to me to fight back against a terrible disease. So, I joined a committee.

The year marched on and I lost touch.

Not really invested in anything the organization put on, but rather just going through the motions and showing up to meetings when it was convenient. I wasn’t proud of this, but at the same time I was a busy college student, so that’s a great excuse, right?

Second semester arrived and I had this unexplainable gut feeling that I needed to step my game up. I needed to get involved, get motivated, and do whatever I could to help this organization because its passion and heart was worth investing effort into. I kicked it into high gear and started fundraising, being involved with fellow committee members, and getting to know the girl that oversaw our committee.

Fast forward to the week before the big event. It was a normal Friday morning, except I was planning to travel home for Easter weekend. My dad called me and said with a serious tone “call me when you get home, we need to talk.” Those words are never good.

Of course the whole way home all the possibilities of news I could receive raced through my head, but didn’t prepare me for what was to come. I finally arrived, and anxiously called my dad as he requested. He said, “Brittany, Granddaddy has cancer and it does not look good.”

Shattered. My heart. My world. Turned upside down and back again.

I didn’t know what to say or do, so I just hung up and took off running down the road. I ran until I was out of tears, and sat down in my favorite spot by the neighborhood creek. I sat there watching the water pass just as fast as the emotions ran through my heart. I kept thinking of anything, anything I could physically do to stop this or make it go away.

And then it hit me.

There was nothing I could do to fix the cancer in Granddaddy’s body, but there was an opportunity to stop this disease from shattering other lives in the future. Relay for Life was that channel of energy and emotions I could utilize for grief, coping, but most importantly, a beacon of hope.

Fundraising, planning the night-of, and my commitment to this organization is my way of standing up to cancer, honoring those lives lost, and celebrating the ones spared. I believe God uses us as the hands and feet of His mighty power to carry out His will for the world, and I believe we are His vessel for making a difference in a world full of cancer.

I continue to serve this organization now as the Logistics Chair, and wouldn’t trade my time here for anything.

To me, Relay is more than just another detail of my resume; it is my Hope and heart to say that one day in my lifetime, I believe this world will finally be cancer free.

F.A.M.I.L.Y- forget about me, I love you. This is what family means to Rutgers.

And personally, I believe in it because my father proves it to me everyday. Those who are fortunate can say their family means the world to them…and this is my explanation.

In Jim Collins’s book Good to Great, he explains what he believes is a level 5 leader. He says that a level 5 executive is someone who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.”

As soon as I read this definition, it was as if a light bulb went off in my head. In my world, Jim Collins was explaining my father.

My dad, or as I call him Daddy, is a master at perfectly balancing his personal humility and professional will for the sake of our family.   Lets start with professional will. No matter how busy, how stressed, or how tired my father is, he drops everything in times of the family’s needs.

In high school, I competed with an all-star cheerleading team, which meant that every weekend was a trip to a new state. At the same time, my sister was on a competitive travel soccer team. In order to help my mother out, he came up with a plan. Every competition that was a long drive, my dad would drive me and my mother would go with my sister. This meant about a six-hour drive on Friday night and a six-hour drive home, through the very late hours of the Sunday evening and most often, early a.m. hours on a Monday.

When competitions were far enough to take a plane, he would always offer my mother to go, allowing her to always have the easier travel.

Going to college six hours from home gets pretty hard sometimes. When I want to surprise my mother and sister for a weekend, my father is at my school in exactly six hours to pick me up and bring me home. Six hours here, six hours back. And let’s not forget the twelve-hour trip to bring me back on Monday for classes. Professional will. A plan, an idea, a strategy.

This is something my father will always possess. Personal humility.

Lets talk about the topic of travel soccer and all-star cheerleading again. Two passions that my sister and I acquired. One word that would always float in the back of our heads; expensive. Providing us with a great house, a surplus of toys at Christmas time, and endless amounts of food, my sister and I still knew our parents didn’t have a money tree in the backyard. Knowing the cost of these two activities, it was never a problem for my father. He truly wanted us to cherish what we loved, even if this meant money out of the family savings.

He financially extended himself to make sure he gave his children what they wanted. College, out-of-state college. Scary for my mother and I, but never a problem for my father. His mindset is always geared toward living in the moment. His optimism is what keeps him calm, cool, and collected and certain that the future is going to be bright.

Jim Collins describes the process of the window and the mirror: “Level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well, and if they cannot find a specific person or event to give credit to, they credit good luck.”

One of the main reasons my family is so passionate is because of my father. But he would never admit this. If you asked him why our family is the way it is, he would say because of his three girls. I guarantee he would look out the window and credit a million people and good luck before he credited himself, the person the credit really belongs to.

Honestly, I am the lucky one.

I am the luckiest girl in the world to call this man my father. I could easily go on and on about all the great things he does for our family. As soon as I submit this, I will probably think of a few more great examples I wish I added.  I just want to say thank you to Jim Collins for being able to put in words the kind of leader my father is. I also want to say thank you to my father, for being the person you are everyday. My love for you is unconditional, and our family is truly blessed with you. Thank you for being my superhero.

(Written by Rebecca Lewis)

Well, we were pregnant again. We had an eighteen month little girl at home, and we were well on our way to having two kids. It was exciting and overwhelming at the same time. I was so, so sick; barely able to keep any food down most days, let alone try to play with my busy toddler. It was happening. There was no turning back for us.

We were so thrilled to be having another baby! We love being parents and had always wanted to have our kids close together. It was so fun to start planning for our new little one.

I was almost 20 weeks, the halfway point in a pregnancy. I was headed in for a regular appointment and was feeling nervous. More than usual.

I headed into my appointment, and my doctor started to look for that special heartbeat. Nothing. He grabbed an ultrasound machine. Still nothing. Our little baby had died. I was all alone and heartbroken.

We went through a crummy induced labor and delivery and found out that our baby was a little boy. It was a terribly sad day for us. Something that we never expected. We never thought that we would lose a baby. No one ever does. Loss is always hard. Always.

There is something unique about losing an unborn baby. It’s not just about the baby being gone. It’s about the future. You’re entire future is different. We spent months planning on having a new baby, and now he was just gone. It felt weird.

We had been planning a big family trip in the summer, during which I would be pregnant. That was different now. I returned all my maternity swimsuits and tried to settle into a life that was different than what we had been planning.

There was also some relief. I was relieved. Having a baby is such a financial responsibility and is extremely stressful. We were struggling at the time, so I did. I felt relieved.

And then I felt guilty. So guilty.

All I wanted was to have that baby with me. But he was gone and there wasn’t a thing that I could do about it.

I was filled with so many terrible feelings. I didn’t even know how to start healing. I found a great deal of support in friends and family who had similar experiences. My personal beliefs and faith in God and His plan helped and gave me strength. My husband stood by me. He was broken too, but together we were able to put our world back together and settle into our new reality.

And I know that I would not have survived without my daughter. She is a joy and being her mom kept me going.

A few months later, after experiencing some issues with sleep deprivation and other personal struggles, I decided to talk to my doctor about the possibility of post-partum depression. After a few conversations with my doctor, we decided to try an anti-depressant to help with my sleep. I am so grateful for the help that I had from medication and helpful doctors. I know that I would not be where I am without this.

From my experiences, I have learned the importance of asking for help from those around you.

People are always willing to listen, more than I ever realized. I also learned that I was stronger than I thought. I wasn’t able to be strong every day, but I did my best to chose to be happy for myself and my family.

Ultimately, I healed and overcame this loss because I of the choices I made every single day. I chose my family. I did not want to be lost in a grey cloud of grief, and I knew that I couldn’t be the best wife and mother if I was constantly lost in my sadness. I chose to be happy.

I put on a smile, even when it hurt the most. I chose to remain positive and to remember that the pain I was experiencing wouldn’t last forever. It was only permanent if I let it be.

(Written by Juliana Leckszas)

I have been given the amazing opportunity to be on the executive board for the 2015- 2016 Relay For Life at Virginia Tech. I was not given just a board of fellow peers and students to work with to plan the event this year…I was given a family.

Throughout the fall semester we grew from just a group of single individuals meeting each other for the first time into something so cohesive and wonderful. We all complement each other and help each other grow and flourish so that we can put on the best Relay For Life event that we can.

When you are apart of such a big event like Relay For Life especially at Virginia Tech where we are the largest collegiate Relay For Life in the world you always get the question so why are you involved in an event like this. Whenever I am asked this question I could talk your ear off for hours about the many different reasons as to why I want and love to be apart of Relay For Life.

However, the beauty of Relay For Life is that you don’t have to be personally affected by cancer to be apart of the event.

Yes, the majority of people that participate have been affected somehow by cancer in their life whether it be the grandmother had cancer, their dad had cancer, their neighbor had cancer, etc., but you also see the people that come out and participate just because they want to support the cause and that is one of my favorite parts about Relay For Life.

Relay For Life is about everyone coming together to support one cause and that is the fight against cancer.

One of the main reasons why I relay takes me back to when I was 10 years old. My parents sat me and my older brother down and told us that Grampy had lung cancer. Now, as a 10 year old I had a hard time wrapping my brain around what exactly cancer was and how it was going to affect my Grampy. My parents did their best to explain what was going on to a 10 and 13 year old, but they could only tell us so much.

Finally, the question surfaced, “is Grampy going to die?”

Those words coming out of a little child’s mouth should never have to be said, but my parents knew they had to answer.

My mom was gone a lot the next couple of months traveling to and from home to be with Grampy. We would visit him a few times a month, but each time we went we could see the progression of him getting worse and worse and the visits would get harder.

One day, my brother and me came home from school and our stepfather picked us up from the bus stop. He brought us inside and sat us on the couch and gave us the news that Grampy had passed peacefully in his sleep. The cancer had become too much for his body and he couldn’t hold on any longer.

Tears immediately burst from both of our eyes as we realized that we were never going to see Grampy again. That night we drove to Maryland to be with our mom and the rest of the family to get ready for the funeral.

I will never forget the last moments I had with my Grampy and all of wonderful memories before he was sick.

I relay so that no one has to say good-bye to a loved one because of cancer. I relay because no one should have to grow up without a mom or a dad or a sibling because of cancer. I relay because cancer has taken too many lives.

Virginia Tech Relay For Life has given me an amazing opportunity to make a difference in so many lives. I am proud of what we have accomplished so far this year and I look forward to what the spring semester has in store. We won’t stop fighting until cancer is no more. For more infromation visit vtrelay.org.

(Written by Ruchi Rohra)

I spent the better part of the day today looking up recipes for various pastas (don’t ask me what I did for the rest of the day; I might be the only person in 2015 still watching The West Wing, and I’m thoroughly ashamed). When I say pasta, I don’t mean pasta dishes. No, I don’t need the Food Network to tell me how to make a bomb pasta primavera or baked lasagna (just my overbearing mother). What I did look up was fresh pasta recipes.

Spaghetti, rigatoni, ravioli, and my personal favorite, tagliatelle (I’m bougie), there are so many different types of noodles, all lovely and carby in their own ways. As I’m sure you know (other people care about this too, right?), pasta making is an art, and there are many mediums on which it can be created. There are endless choices between semolina and white flour, whole eggs or yolks or no eggs at all, hand rolling or pasta machines, the pasta-bilities are endless (will not blame you if you choose to leave now).

As I settled on a recipe (ravioli, white flour, three eggs, hand rolled), I walked into my pantry to get started. The first thing my eyes found, though, was the dried boxed pasta that was already sitting there.

You need to understand something about my family. Actually, two things.

1. We dislike each other very much and agree on very little.

2. We agree on carbs.

My family has reinvented the idea of carbo-loading, treating it as an every day necessity rather than a once-a-month (okay, once-a-week) treat. We eat bread, rice, potatoes, and yes, pasta, like nobody’s business (seriously, it’s nobody’s business, fuck off). So when I say there’s pasta in my house, I mean it. In the interest of journalistic integrity (for the grand total of 0 people who read this), I will go check to see just how much pasta is in the pantry, so that I may present an accurate report.

Okay. I’m back.

In our pantry right now there are 2 boxes of spaghetti (one from Whole Foods because we are fancy as shit), 2 boxes of fettuccine, 1 box of large lasagna sheets, 1 box of “cut rigate,” 1 box of elbows (elbow pasta, freak), and 6 boxes of Annie’s organic macaroni & cheese (I still do not know if I believe whether mac & cheese constitutes “pasta,” but that’s a whole different issue).

So basically, the point of that heinously long list of carbohydrate-based products (Mr. Atkins is probably rolling over in his low-carb, high protein grave) is that there is more than enough pasta in my house. So much so that it would be not only borderline insane to make my own, but also wholly unnecessary. So naturally, I, being a reasonable and rational human adult (lol) walked away, and decided to pursue something more productive and useful (like The West Wing).

Now that I sit here in my kitchen poring over a slice of banana bread and tea (it’s cheat day), I think back to this afternoon, and wonder if I should have made that pasta after all.

I can feel the flour coating my fingers, scooping up globs of egg and oil.

I can feel the dough beneath my palms, doughy and elastic. I can feel the sweet ache of rolling and stretching a fresh sheet over the counter, cutting it with precision until it’s just right. In my head, it seems like a wonderful, fulfilling experience. And I wish now that I had felt these things after all.

Because, honestly, who cares if there’s already spaghetti in the pantry? Life’s way too short not to make fresh pasta.

I’m starting to realize that not everything has to have a reason. Sometimes it’s okay to just do, just live. Sometimes just wanting a feeling in your head, in your heart, in your body is enough. I’m the kind of person that tends to pursue things only as means to an end (I was into Machiavelli).

I rarely just enjoy, just doing something or experience something because I want to. But as I sit here regretting not making my own pasta this afternoon, I’m seeing that not everything needs to serve a purpose. Not everything needs to make perfect, logical sense. It’s okay to want to pursue life around the edges rather than in the shortest straight line from A to B. Sometimes it’s better to go for it just because you wanted to knead your own dough instead of boiling the store-bought stuff for 8 and a half minutes.

Live often and free. Do it because you want to, whatever “it” is.

Reason belongs to the head, but life belongs to the heart. If you let things like pure logic hold you back, the opportunity to experience, to feel, to explore, might pass you by. Who knows? Had I made my own pasta today, my very own three cheese ravioli, my whole life could have changed. Maybe I would have discovered a hidden talent. Maybe I would have had friends over, watched Christmas movies, shared laughs and smiles over bowls of pasta (doubtful: I have no friends). What today might have been has passed me by because I let something as silly as rational thinking hold me back. But there is always a tomorrow.

Who cares what’s in your pantry? Make it fresh anyways.

(Written by Nicole Hammett)

My grandmother was there the day I was born.

She kept me multiple days of the week before I began school and many afternoons once I had started. She taught me stories, rhymes, songs, and lessons.

I have nothing but precious memories from my childhood visits at my grandmother’s house, and because she lived alone, I know she cherished my company as well. Part of who I am today is because of her.

However, as much as I hate to admit it, things changed as I grew older. As I entered my teens, I began to dread the boredom that I associated with my grandmother’s basic cable, internet-free house.

Although she lived next door to me, I began visiting less and less, and once I had my drivers license, I had stopped going almost altogether. I only made the trip next door on holidays or when my mother made me. I had no idea at the time what a mistake I was making.

It was my senior year of high school when my mother noticed my grandmother’s memory beginning to fade.

It began with her short-term memory, and you had to retell her things multiple times. However, she could still tell you in perfect detail stories of her childhood. She soon began to forget names, and her doctors explained that she was suffering from dementia.

We knew it would get worse, we just had no idea how fast. Within a couple months, she began telling elaborate stories of conversations she had had that day with deceased relatives, talking to voices in her head, hiding from people she believed to be in her house trying to hurt her, and her “trips to heaven” she had made that day in order to talk to her sister.

She once called 9-1-1 on my father at two in the morning for beating me and mom, when my dad was out of state at the time (and he’s never harmed a hair on our heads). The most hurtful moment to my family, however, was the night she did not know who her own daughter, my mother, was. The child she raised and who now had taken care of her every day for years was only a stranger standing in her bedroom.

I began to visit her more often, but I felt extremely guilty for how I dreaded seeing her and the state she was in. Seeing my grandmother, who used to be so strong and independent, now unable to walk and not in her right mind broke my heart.

So, I did another horrible thing that I would regret: I avoided the visits so I would not have to experience the sadness and hurt.

My family, as well as myself, soon realized that we were dealing with my grandmother’s dementia and our pain in a completely wrong way. I now understood that I needed to face my grandmother and cherish the time I had left with her instead of living with the fear of what I might witness.

So, I began to accompany my mother on visits more often. The way we interacted with her changed, as well.

Before, we fought her and the stories she came up with in her head. We told her she was wrong, and that the people she saw and voices she heard were only in her mind. We tried to force the fact that the stories she invented were not true.

However, this did not bring peace, only anger.

It hurt her to think that we did not believe what she said and that we thought she was crazy, and she was beginning to resent us for it. And the times she started to accept that we might be right and what she believes is false, it only filled her with fear.

She did not deserve an emotional roller coaster such as this in her last few years.

So, my family decided to deal with the situation in a lighter way. Instead of disagreeing and fighting with my grandmother, we acted as if her stories were true, laughed about them with her, and asked her for more details.

If she said that she had been running around town with her father all day, we ignored the facts that she couldn’t leave her bed and that he had passed away decades ago, and instead asked them where all they’d been and if they had a good time.

Although it was bittersweet, seeing my grandmother not so frustrated made everything easier to deal with both for us and her.

That next fall, I left for college and only saw my grandmother every few months when I visited home. One night, while sitting in my dorm, I received the call from my mother that I had been dreading but expecting for the past few months.

She told me that my grandmother had taken a turn for the worse, and that this was more than likely going to be her last night.

It was in that moment that my past regrets overwhelmed me. Every day that I dreaded going to see her. Every moment that I ignored her and sat playing on my phone. Every visit that I avoided for fear of what I might see.

I only had a few moments with the woman who raised my mother and helped to raise me, and I had taken them for granted. I had not been around enough when she needed love and family the most.

And now at the end of her life, I had no way to get home from college in time.

I still thank God that this was a false alarm. She lived not only until the next morning, but even though the doctors only gave her a few weeks, she is still alive today. I believe the Lord wanted to teach me a lesson in love, family, strength, and courage.

He wanted to teach me to cherish the moments I’m blessed to live, and the moments I’m given with my friends and family. And most importantly, He wanted to give me more time with my grandmother, which shows what a gracious, giving, and amazing God He is.

Soon after this incident, my family decided to place my grandmother in a nursing home. Although it was incredibly difficult to hear how much she wanted to go home, this turned out to be a wonderful decision.

Her mind still goes in and out, but the care and steady routine has greatly increased her health. While she once was too weak to lift even her hand, today she is more alert and has more energy to interact and talk with us.

I enjoy every moment I am given to listen to her tell me stories of everywhere she has been “running around to” all day.

Sadly, the doctors decided a few months ago to take my grandmother off her medicine for dementia. Her days are now categorized as “good days” and “bad days.”

Some days she will remember us all, while on others it is a struggle. Some she can be angry and yelling, and other times she is sweet and says she loves us.

Some days she claims she’s been running up and down the halls, and others she’ll admit she’s been laying in her bed all day.

The holidays were definitely different with her in the nursing home for the first time. There was a felt absence at our annual family get-togethers.

Still, I could not be more thankful to still have been able to visit her on Christmas Day. She was in high spirits, talkative, and it was altogether a “good day.” My mother said that her mom having a good day was all she needed for this to be a great Christmas, and I couldn’t agree more. Even if we did have to remind Granny a few times what day it was.

Having a loved one suffer from dementia has been one of the most difficult things my family has had to deal with.

Every moment is cherished, both the good and the bad, with the good moments being priceless gifts from God.

Although it has made me regret my past and the time I could have spent with her and chose not to, as well as all the days I am away at college, I have come to peace with the fact that I cannot change it. Dwelling on mistakes and making myself miserable will do nothing for me, my family, or my grandmother, and I know that all I need to focus on is my time with her now and in the future.

I won’t make the same mistakes again, and I won’t take advantage of the gift of more time with her that God has given us.

I don’t mind if she doesn’t remember me now. I don’t mind listening to her stories and going along with them. Sitting in the nursing home with her and being in her presence, 100 percent, not engulfed in technology, is all it takes to make the most out of our time.

The simple act of being there for our family shows a powerful amount of love in itself, and I now realize the importance of something as simple as time.