Ever since I could remember, my whole family would go to the upper peninsula of Michigan, in a small town called Republic. We would go around the end of August before school started over the summer every year. My Aunt Christy was born and raised there. Her sister owned a house with a cabin that my aunt and her kids would go down and sleep there. It’s a 6 hour drive and my aunt would go down there often since she didn’t work. Over the summer, my family and my dad’s 3 sisters and one brother, who was married to Aunt Christy, would bring their kids and dogs up to Michigan. We would kayak and swim to this place that has all these abandoned cabins and walk around. We fished and drove to lots of places my aunt would want us to go see for ourselves because of how amazing and fun it would be. This one place we go to every single year, we call it the cliffs but it’s actually called Blackrock in Marquette. It used to be just us whenever we went, nobody knew about it until a few years ago when people just started crowding around it. It’s still fun but we liked it way better when people were not there, it was easier to take pictures of our family members jumping into the freezing waters of Lake Superior.

When we first started going to Michigan, we were just going off what my aunt said since she knew everything about her hometown. So after around 11 years of going there, we always had tradition. First day we would just get settled in, walk around and just get hit with memories during the past years. We have this trail that goes through some trees we always run down with our dogs. At the end of the trail, you see the water and a hill that you have to go down to reach the water. There’s a bench that swings, for our elders that come and the adults to sit there. They sit there watching the youngsters run down the hill that leads down to the water. There’s a bunch of rocks down there that are perfect for skipping. My aunt was the photographer of the family. She took either the most random pictures or the most memorable ones. My brother and cousins would be wrestling for fun and she’d get any picture she could get. The second day, we’d go out and kayak, swim, fish, grill and maybe cut down some trees since we wanted to make more room. We’d do lots of things the second day but also not a lot because we just want to be enjoying nature and being with family. We do a lot of stuff that I can’t name it all.

When we ate, we had the same things every year. For breakfast, we’d go to this small diner occasionally or the moms would team up together and make an awesome breakfast with french toast, hash browns, eggs, toast and just anything you could imagine having at a family breakfast. Back to the Blackrock cliffs in Marquette, Michigan, everyone in my family would be so excited and impatient because they just want to go so badly. We’re in Republic so the drive to Marquette is about 45 minutes. The place where the cliffs are is in a park called Presque Isle. You have to drive up and down this one way road through a forest to get to the cliffs. You park and you have to walk either down the rocks where you can watch your family members jump off the cliffs. Or you can walk up this steep hill that leads to the top of the cliffs so you can jump. When we start going to the cliffs, I was too small to jump off the 30-35 foot jump, my parents would probably let me jump with someone but they didn’t want me to feel rushed or scared. I ended up not jumping off that cliff for about 12 years. Between those 12 years I jumped about 2 times maybe by the pressure of my family members.

One year, I didn’t jump off the cliff once again, and my Aunt Christy wanted to take a picture of our family. After taking a few pictures of all of us, my aunt says out loud, “Okay now only the jumpers in the picture. Ana step out.” She said it in a kind of rude way and she just called me out on it even though I already knew that I haven’t jumped. My fear of not jumping turned into embarrassment, even though my family would give me a hard time and just be joking, like family does, they never tried to make me feel like it was pathetic, except for my sister, who made fun of me a bunch. Every year my family would ask me if I’m planning on jumping and I’d either have the answer of “I don’t know, we’ll see” or just a straight up “No”. That fear of jumping into the water turned into a 12 year long embarrassment, and my family didn’t even know that I was feeling embarrassed. But that embarrassment also turned into something more. Last year was different though.

My Aunt Christy was the best aunt anyone could ask for. She was the life of the party. She took pictures of every single thing on sight, her favorite were sunsets. I remember as a kid in elementary school, during my lunch time my aunt would call me out and bring me out to lunch. It was her and my most favorite thing to do. I looked forward to it every single week. I also dreamed of making a travel softball team, and my aunt being there taking pictures and having her huge blue and white umbrella shading her from the hot sun over the summer. Christmas of 2016, my aunt ended up getting a megaphone and a cowbell. I was so excited because I knew I had made the Park Ridge Pistols team and I just had these moments that hadn’t even happened yet. I’d be playing at my game over the summer and she’d be over there ringing her cowbell and screaming through the megaphone, cheering my name and pushing buttons on the toy to make siren noises whenever I had a good hit. Just being obnoxious and loud like her normal self would be. She and my grandma were both my #1 fans when it came to anything.
Everybody my age complains that their life sucks. They get upset about the smallest things when they don’t get what they want. They want a phone, and if they don’t get it right away, they complain and whine about how much their parents don’t care about them, just because of a phone. Not once have I ever heard someone in my grade or anyone in highschool talk about how much they love their family and not be embarrassed about it. Me and hopefully few other people in Maine South High School only think good things about our families and actually takes advantage of what we have only once in life. I believe I had an awesome life, everyone was happy, until last year, the saturday right when spring break started. This, was the absolute worst time of my young life. The week before spring break we found out that my only grandparent that I have ever had was diagnosed with colon cancer. All of us were shocked but also hopeful that she will most definitely get better, because our whole lives Ta, my grandma, was the strongest person ever to live. Then a week later, spring break of my sophomore year, we get a call from my uncle. My Aunt Christy was up in Michigan when it happened, in her hometown. She was just walking out somewhere and all of a sudden she started feeling dizzy. She told her friends whom she was with to call 911. She had an aneurysm. She collapsed on the ground. She was in the hospital for about 3 days and she was not showing any kind of improvement. My parents decided to go up to Michigan with my uncle and sit with my aunt. So my sister and I were home alone. This is when I prayed to God every single day, praying she would be okay. She and my grandma, both in the same week, had a life threatening problem that just sunk my single peaceful heart, and turned it into a million pieces. My #1 softball fans. The only ones that would actually come to my games because they would find anyway to come and support me. Always lightened up my day just seeing their cars pull up to our house and them not even telling us they were coming over. After those few days, the hospital told us she was not going to get better. Either we kept her alive, but she’d be a vegetable the rest of her life, or we pull the plug. It was a really hard thing to hear, but I had to stay strong. This is when I had to make a decision whether I let all my feelings out and cry every single night and day, or I hold everything back and be strong for my family. I decided to be strong, later after everything I was thinking maybe I should’ve let things out, because I’ve been told that holding things in your whole life is not healthy. But I held them in. I decided to be strong for my family. I was looked at as the weak family member, I believe. I’m the youngest out of everyone. I felt I had to show everyone that nobody knew I had in me. And I did surprise people. Everyone came up to me and gave me a hug, saying they were really proud of how strong I was being when really on the inside I was slowly breaking. It’s been a year since she’s been gone. It still doesn’t feel like she’s gone, but whenever I think of going to Michigan, celebrating Christmas and football sundays at her house, I snap back into reality and I break down in tears. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m not trying to make decisions that cause me to feel worse later in life. I never like showing my emotions in front of people, but I feel like after this, I don’t even care. I’m human. I have emotions I shouldn’t have to hold them back for people. There are some things that I hold in without knowing, it’s just part of me now. It’s been a year and two months since she’s been gone. March 19, 2017. I think of her everyday, and I’m just now starting to realize, she’s actually gone. Last year I made a decision dedicated to her, not the most important, but it was to me. I jumped off the cliffs in Presque Isle. I jumped so many times. The first time I couldn’t breathe because the water was so cold, then I just got used to it after every jump. All those times I mouthed and thought “This is for you”, and I went. For her. I wished she was there to take pictures and give me a big proud hug, but it was only my uncle there not knowing how to use the camera, so he just got really zoomed out photos of us jumping. I loved the effort coming from him. I appreciate my family more now if that’s even possible because I just love them so much. We’ve had our ups and downs, but that wouldn’t be reality if we didn’t. We got the tough stuff. But we handled it as a family and we still are.