The First Time I Saw Cancer

This is about my first experience with cancer.

I walked in the gray hospital doors with my Mom and my brother, Will. I was jumping around and trying not to step on the cracks in the black and white tile floor. It took a few minutes to get to my grandmother's room. As soon as we walked in, I noticed something was wrong. I had been to the hospital before, when my brother fell off his bike and broke his leg and when my sister was running on a dock in Belfast, with no shoes, and got a huge splinter in her foot. Even I had been to the ER before, when I fell off a wagon and cut the skin above my eyebrow open and the doctors glued it back together. But this was different, before I went into the hospital knowing that everyone was going to be fine, they just had to put stitches in or get a cast; this time I knew when I walked into the dark room with the TV on and the cold, steel, beeping machines that surrounded the bed, I knew that everything wasn't going to be OK this time.

My grandmother lay on the bed with the blue blankets around her, the first thing I noticed was her hair. It was falling out. My grandmother had lots of short black hair, now clumps of it were gone and I felt something besides here hair was missing. She said hello to us and I noticed the clear plastic tubes going into her nose; I asked what they were for and my Mom told me they were for oxygen. A nurse came in and asked how she was doing; my grandmother said she was better, now that her daughter and grandkids were with her. My Mom started talking to my grandmother and I sat next to her bed for a while, holding her hand. Then my Mom told us to leave the room for a few minutes, so Will and I left and started playing tag until a nurse came by and told us to stop. We sat down on the hard floor and watched nurses, doctors, visitors, and people in wheelchairs pass by. I remember one old man who was in a wheelchair, with a clear oxygen bag on a pole, who, when he passed by, asked us how we were and what we were doing; we said we were just waiting for our Mom to stop talking to our grandmother and tell us to come in. We asked him how he was, and he said he had been better; he told us to have a good day and left.

Finally, my Mom told us to come back, we walked back into the dark room with the shades pulled over the windows and the lights dimmed, and sat down. My grandmother told us to watch TV for a while; so we did and we also had some chocolate that was slightly squished. My grandmother started talking about some of her favorite memories of us when we were younger; when I went to her house for my birthday one year, and when we played in her beautiful backyard that had so many flowers and plants, and when we sat inside her messy house with Reese's Pieces and watched TV and movies on rainy days. She told us how much she loved us and how much she would miss us; we told her we loved her too, but I didn't understand why she would miss us, she would come home, right?

I didn't realize it then, but I realize it now; that was the first time I ever saw my grandmother, or anyone, with cancer; it was also the last time I ever remember seeing her. When we were driving home, I asked why she had cancer, why did she have to be the one to get it? My grandmother wasn't just my grandmother, she was my friend, she kept my secrets and I kept hers, she was always there to talk to and never rebuked me. I walked out of the house into the clean fresh air that day, not knowing I would never see my grandmother again.

Author's Note

What do you think of this?

Reviews

[Emma Olsen]

This is actually pretty impressive for an eighth grader. Good job. I'm going to point out a few things, though, for you to work on. I think you've done an great job of really personalizing this and adding in details which not only flesh out the world but also bring me into the characters world and illuminate her past. However, I think the execution of this is a bit spotty. I felt the details, for instance, about the sister and brother going to the ER were great, but then there are other areas where you are a bit vague. For instance, you never specify the type of cancer the grandmother has, but knowing this detail will tell the reader a lot about what kind of treatment she's undergone, how she's suffering, how long she's been fighting the cancer. I mean, breast cancer and lung cancer may both be cancer, but they are radically different. Giving us details on this front help the reader to understand the struggle the grandmother has undergone and understand her character. If she refused treatment because it would only give her a few more months or treated it and then found herself with much less time we have entirely different scenarios and characters. Try to avoid generalities wherever you can. Details are what really show the character to the reader and make them believable. You always want to make sure they're relevant, but when you have an opportunity to make a generality a specific, take it always. After all, 'anger' is much easier for me to picture and understand than 'an emotion.'
As a relevant side-note, I think that more of the relationship with the grandmother needs to be fleshed out. You touch on the grandma being 'a best friend,' but you're telling me all this at the very end after almost no interaction with her. A better way, and this will come under the 'show not tell' banner that all instructors are VERY fond of (personally, I think telling can be engaging if you do it right, but it's an art - the Bronte sisters are generally a good example of writing which tells, but you can decide for yourself if that's engaging. I have a hard time getting through some of their books. Anyways.) You should try to reveal more about the grandmother through flashbacks, references to memories which show her in a different light and help support the claims that she was a best friend and all that. Show me, as said.

What will also help you is dialogue. You have none in here, but dialogue is the primary way for us to get to know characters other than the narrator. Who is the mother? The brother? The sister? The grandmother? Describing their actions shows us a little of who they are, but their words are what really make us know them. You have a few areas where you have opportunities for dialogue but then just relay them through the narrator's eyes, rather than capitalizing on them to flesh out these characters who are important to her. It might be okay for the mother, brother, and sister, but it's imperative that the grandmother, as the subject of these musings, have a voice. Even if she can't speak here, for whatever reason, this is an opportunity to use the contrast of flashbacks to provide the reader with a comparison. After all, I have no idea what the grandmother was like before this - but I want to know.

You might also want to work on your descriptions just a bit. You are providing me with images, which is wonderful, but I think a couple of your words are bland and could be more effective descriptors. I'm thinking, in particular, about the colors. You say blue, white, black when you could say colors like ultramarine, eggshell, coal. Some of this can be applied to your other descriptors, as well, in that your words should be geared to create a certain mood. You start to get to this when you describe the room as 'dark' and the machines as 'cold,' but I think you can expand on this even more and try to use it to further your story and reveal the emotions the character is feeling. (Because I get a good idea of her past, but not really how she feels about this or who she is, now, in some ways.) Here's a quick rewrite I did to give you an example: But, as I walked into the dim, dreary room and saw my grandmother lying there, looking like a shadow, I knew this was going to be different. Before I went into the hospital knowing that everyone was going to be fine, they just had to put stitches in or get a cast; this time the cold, steel machines towering above her revealed something more serious, communicating it to us through their high-pitched, almost mocking, beeps. They were like vultures, waiting to descend.
See how I used the descriptions to try to set the moods more, reveals how the character feels, and also progress the story? Obviously, you should try to do this in your own way, but it's good to realize just how much you can twist the details to your end, especially if you're in first person. You've got the basics, but you should definitely try to explore it more as you develop as a writer.

You have a few errors:
"something besides here hair" her
"said he had been on better" been better
"Finwlly," Finally
"over the Windows and the lights dommed," windows (no capitalization) and dimmed
You also use semi-colons a LOT and a quite a few of them are used incorrectly. A semi-colon should be used either in a list of clauses (e.g. I had to do a number of things: brush my stubborn, but soft, hair; fix the sink; and go pick up the kids.) or when the portion following the semi-colon can stand on its own as a sentence but seems to fit criteria to be included with the main sentence. I tried to do this above in the example I already wrote. Regular lists should use commas, a clause list uses semi-colons so that commas can be used (as above) without confusing the reader into thinking a new member of the list has come up. I'd avoid using semi-colons unless absolutely necessary. They're not very common and you can usually get the same effect by just starting a new sentence. They tend to make things too long, anyways.

Overall, I do think you have promise, especially for being so young, so don't give up! I do think you have a lot to work on, but this is true of almost everyone and every draft. My first drafts are almost always terrible. I only improve them through editing. What I think could help you a lot is trying to see what is and isn't working in others' work. Being able to critique others so thoroughly has really helped me to see the errors I make in my own work and allowed me to improve immensely. Even if you only do it for yourself, I think that could really help you. I have a hard time reading, now, but the huge amount of material I read around your age gave me an almost endless source of inspiration on a number of fronts that I think really helped me. You may be busy, but I think it could be helpful for you to just try to read as many different types of writing as possible so that you can really see what can be done with it - so, not just the 'fun' reads, like the Hunger Games and Divergent and whatever, but also literary classics like 1984, The Lord of the Rings, and Pride and Prejudice (since I said something about the Bronte sisters earlier. haha) In high school they force you to read a lot of them by yourself, but I think you should go through some of the books on the AP reading list yourself, especially since the workload changes once you get into high school (and then, again, in college.)
Good luck!

[MacKenzie]

Thank you, this review was very helpful to me as a writer.

[Emma Olsen]

I'm glad. Keep at it. =)

[NoelHC]

When we are young we think our grandparents will be with us forever, they are so strong, so wise, so loving, so forgiving of us.
Then they become old, frail, weak, and we lose them.
We cannot believe it has happened.
Then we notice that our own mother and father are starting to look like their own parents. And the cycle repeats.
I am sorry for your loss of your grandmother, especially to cancer, it is such a horrible disease.
Your writing moved me, I like what you have started here and encourage you to continue.