Personal Narrative: Lessons Learned About Life

“In three words I can summarize everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” I remember these words repeating in my head as my mom told me the devastating news about my uncle. When you are living your life, you began to feel as if nothing can come between you and your happiness. You forget that this journey does come to an end like a roller coaster does after its crazy, adrenaline-filled ride and it can happen to anyone you know. Events in life can hit you at any given moment, and sometimes you have to take the memory by the hand and carry it with you because it may be the reason you are who you have become today. We had planned a trip to San Antonio, Texas with my mother’s sister and her husband, in the week before New Years. My parents felt the need to treat them to a little trip before they left for our home country of Pakistan. The trip started with us seeing many amazing areas of San Antonio, but by far the best was the beautiful River Walk. We went there on our first day of the trip at night because all the lights turn on and makes it look so alluring. As we went down the stairs to the beginning of the river, the whiff of foods from every country in the world soaked up my nostrils. The sounds of music came from every restaurant and made it appear as if Gatsby was hosting one of his grand parties here. We felt the soothing, cool breeze touch our skin and make us want to walk even more along the path. The River Walk was by far one of my favorite places, and I would love to go experience it again. It truly makes you feel all types of happiness. Unexpectedly, the morning of the third day of our trip, my father got a phone call from Pakistan. …show more content…
The phone call part of the situation was not the unusual thing, but the abrupt and suddenness felt very uneasy. It felt like the feeling Gatsby may have gotten when he let Daisy drive his car before she hit Myrtle. The feeling of anxiousness you get when you know something is about to go wrong. As my father answered the phone, the bright, surprised smile on his aging face slowly turned the opposite direction. Everyone in the room could sense the heartbreaking news slowly swallowing his happiness away. He continued to listen to what my aunt was saying through the phone and I could could hear the feeling of despair echoing through her voice. After a few minutes my dad turned the phone off and quietly called the adults into the other hotel room. He began explaining to them what had just occurred back in Pakistan and I heard many gasps throughout the conversation. My mother came out of the room with tears filling her eyes like child when they cannot find their mother in the grocery store. “Your uncle passed away this morning.” That one sentence just stopped my entire world. My Dad’s oldest brother was always very frail, almost like a leaf in the Autumn season and thin for the longest time that I had known him. He had grown very soft-spoken and emotional as his Parkinson’s progressed throughout the years. Whenever my mother had first explained to my young self that he had the disease, I truly did not understand the progressive severity of it. I had watched the movie, Love and other drugs, a couple years after and realized the main character was going through Early onset Parkinson’s as well and it helped me understand that everyone goes through difficult situations in life in different ways. My uncle had fought his thirty-year battle with Parkinson’s like the bravest soldier in the war. He had developed it the very young age of thirty-three and had lived throughout all his children’s weddings and everything else that life includes with it, making every adjustment needed to make his family stable and happy. I could not believe this day would come. I had never experienced a close family death and experiencing it for the first time just shattered my heart into a million pieces. I