Everything Is Perfect

I am seventeen years old. I have always had this perfect life, happily married parents, two brothers and the perfect mansion. I have a father has a very well-paying job and my mother stays at home. My life is similar to those you hear about in the modern fairy-tale stories. I attend a prestigious school on the Upper East Side and have everything I could wish for. My parents own a holiday house down on the lake… really it’s more like a home away from home. We seem like the perfect family from the sounds of it, don’t we? We are. We are timid people, I have no qualms about those who surround me in my daily life, on the other hand my father is very cautious about the people who he interacts with and my mother, well, who really knows…

A normal day is generally I go to school, I come home from school, as simple as that. No, not today, today was different. I return to my home and my mother is sitting right there in the foyer. She scared me! So I ask “Mum why are you sitting there like a statue?” “I am waiting for you father” she replies. I walk to my room immediately. Then I emerge from my room when my father returns. My mother reveals that she went to the doctors and they diagnosed her with breast cancer. I slip into bed that night with all sorts of thoughts circling my head. How bad is it? How long does she have to live? Will she live? When I wake up the next morning and confronted my mother about it. She said quietly, “It is at quite a severe stage, I can’t believe I didn’t realise! The doctors said that chemo is an option but only gave me a short time to live.” As normal I went to school and came home from school. But nothing was normal about today.

A year has gone past. I am eighteen years old. I have graduated. I met a boy! He isn’t rich and posh, but I like him. My father doesn’t think much of him, but I know he will come to like him, hopefully. My mother, I’m positive, would think he is a swell guy. My mother past