Huge Changes

Jessica Lin

Professor Pope

ENGL 121

Feb 10, 2017

Narrative essay – Final Copy

Huge Changes

Have you ever experienced a sudden shock? We can choose to face these troubles or escape them. If we accept them, we will appreciate them for making us strong. In 2008, two sudden things broke my happy and peaceful life. I didn’t want to face them, but I had to accept those cruel facts. Those things changed my whole life and made me strong. It is still engraved in my brain and I cannot ever forget it.

In my youth, my parents and my sister's parents were busy at their jobs, so my sister, my grandmother and I relied on my grandfather. I was always happy with my sister and grandparents in the house, which was built by my grandfather and my grandfather’s family. We liked our house very much. It had five floors, a big backyard garden and a big pool. The first floor was the kitchen and dining room, the second floor was my grandparents' room, the third floor was my parents' and my room, the fourth floor was my sister and her parents' room and the last floor was a gym. Our grandparents always played with us in the garden. I liked to use the gym at the house. My grandparents gave us a really happy childhood, so I never experienced any bad things. I remember one funny thing: my grandfather said I was a very greedy child. I always stole some food to eat when he was cooking. This house had many happy memories for me. I loved my old house and my grandparents.

But in 2008, my life was affected by big changes. First, we faced moving out of my old house, because in my country, if a house is more than fifteen years old, the local government must dismantle and rebuild it. We knew that policy, but the local government just gave us some new apartments and did not rebuild our house, and it made us angry. After our lawyer negotiated with the local government and the negotiations failed, the local government cut the supply of water and electricity for our house; they also let some people try to vandalize our house. Then we wrote a letter to the national leadership about the requirement to rebuild. It didn’t affect the result, but we still stayed and defended our old house. I don’t remember how long we insisted on living there.

For a long time, we lived without electricity and used well water near our old house. We had to use wood buckets to get the well water and it was not an easy thing, so we needed to save the water. Also, we needed to use candles to do everything. At the beginning, I didn't adapt to that kind of environment, so I asked my grandfather to cook food, whatever I wanted. My grandfather loved me very much. He never said anything and just cooked everything and did everything that I wanted, although it was difficult to cook and do everything because of no electricity and using well water. I recognize I was a know-nothing child. Afterwards, my sister told me I couldn’t do that because it made grandfather work very hard. When I saw that my grandfather was tired out, I seemed to understand why my sister said that. I understood I couldn't change the environment, so I had to make myself be strong to accept that kind environment.

Even so, we were still happy living in our old house. Until one day, my parents thought my grandfather’s face looked yellow, which was different than normal, so they took him to the hospital to get a medical examination. We thought it was just small troubles, so I went to school as usual. It was my favorite season which was a brilliant summer and my first day going to middle school. I felt excited to spend the first day, but after class I listened to the bad news when I got home. It was my grandfather got cancer. At that moment, I shocked and I really didn’t want to believe that, but I understood it was true and I had to accept that. Shortly, my eyes filled with tears, so did my sister’s. We couldn’t cry, because our grandfather didn’t know yet. We needed to tell a lie to him. I asked my sister the reason why our grandfather was a very kind man but he got the cancer. She said, “Everyone experiences sickness and death in his life; it is the law of nature, same as our grandfather.”