My family has had multiple tragic deaths throughout my lifetime. I would be sad for a short period of time, then, accept the fact that they have passed away and prayed they are in a better place. I believed I was very mentally strong and could cope with situations like that very well until 3 years ago.

It was a perfect day nice and sunny so my cousin, stepfather, and stepbrother decided to toss the football outside my house for a while. My cousin was having a good time until he slipped and hurt himself on the curb of the street. We all laughed and went back inside. The pain didn’t go away fast so my cousin went to the doctors to get it checked out. The doctor said he wasn’t seriously injured and the pain would go away with some time. While doing the inspection at the doctors, something terrible came up. They found he had cancer.

“How bad is it? Will he be okay?” I kept repeating.

“Your cousin is strong and we will all help him fight through this,” said my mom with a sad tone.
My family and I knew he would be strong and fight it as best he could. My cousin Fausto went from being the happy, guitar playing, life of the party man to a very sad and lost person. Months of treatment and months of pain were really helping him with the war of cancer. After the hardest year my cousin has ever faced in his life, good news arose. The doctors said he had defeated cancer for the time being and said he could soon go back to his normal life. We all knew that cancer could come back at any time, but we were very happy he was going to be able to go back to how he used to live.

I couldn’t have been happier having my favorite cousin back in my life and seeing him happy again. He lived in San Diego so I would see him often. Spending time with him was very fun. Him and I had dinner at a mariscos restaurant one night and he told me something I’d never forget.

“Gabriel promise me you will enjoy life as much as you can, you may not realize it now but life is very short. In my case it is even shorter. Your time will come one day and when it does, you want to go out happily. Knowing you accomplished your goals and lived a happy life” he said.
Fausto was a smart guy, and he was a jokester. He was something else; in fact he started dating the nurse that would take care of him while he was fighting through cancer. I just thought that was coolest thing ever!

Everything seemed to be back to normal for a while until the doctors discovered the cancer was aggressively coming back. I knew this would someday happen but never thought it would come so soon. He did not want to go back to the hospital so my mom fixed up her bedroom and made it a clean place for him to stay and get his treatment. She added hardwood floor so it could be more sanitary. The room smelled like too much hand sanitizer and exactly how a hospital smelled like. Weeks passed and the cancer was so aggressive that Fausto had to be taken to a hospice.

At the time I did not know what a hospice was, I didn’t think too much of it I just knew his cancer was taking over him and we could lose him at any point. My best friend was sleeping over and we decided to do an all nighter. We had chips, sodas, sour patches, and video games. It was a great night when all of a sudden the house phone rang at 4 in the morning. I heard my mom wake up and answer it, and then she started to cry. My stomach dropped and knew something terrible was happening. It was my cousin’s dad saying how Fausto was in critical condition and was going to die in the next few hours.

“Luz, Gabriel, your cousin is dying. We need to go see him right now get ready.” My mom said while tears were coming down her face.

My family and I rushed to the hospice to try to see our cousin for one last time. The hospice looked like a normal house. I was very confused and then figured out that it was a place where you go and die. We got to the room and sat around my cousin. He looked very pale and his cheeks where a little black. He wasn’t saying much at all just lying there while my aunt and mom where saying prayers and trying to talk to him. I looked at my cousin, tears falling down my face, and saw his eyes slowly close. I started to cry very hard and so did everyone in that room. It was traumatizing seeing my favorite cousin just pass away. At his funeral service, it really hit me. I realized he was gone for good, and all the good times I had with him, were just going to be memories from then on. Out of all the deaths that have occurred, all the tragic things that have happened, not growing up with my real father, nothing hit me as hard as realizing he was gone forever. I was the same age, but felt I grew up mentally.