Background Info/ Proposal

I had never had to deal with losing a family member at a older age than twelve years old. Three of my grandparents, great-uncles and aunts and an uncle that my brother and I looked up to passed away before I hit my teen years. They say that a young mind cannot fully comprehend death until the teens years. I was always upset and sad that I would never see these family members until I got to Heaven, but I never understood why this happened to my family. It always felt like we were the only people that were experiencing death. I didn’t know that death happened to people and other things every, single day. I didn’t comprehend how death impacted my family. I didn’t know how losing so many people in my life at a young age would truly affect the way I dealt with things as I got older, especially dealing with death. I became fearful–fearful that everyone around me would be taken from me in the blink of an eye. I still had one person in my life that taught me how to properly cope: my grandmother, or “Grammie.”

Grammie raised me from infancy. She changed more diapers than my dad and mom had, combined. I never considered her a “grandmother” because she was a second mother to me. She was my best friend. I confided in her more than anyone. She always knew what was best for me and–she thought–for everyone else, as well. I never thought about the day when my grandmother would pass away because she had taught me so much about death; she taught me not to be afraid of it and to realize that it happens to everyone. I was never scared of losing her. I knew that when that time came, I’d be near her and would watch her go; I wouldn’t be sad because she wouldn’t want me to be sad.

We had spent the weekend at the cabin (the “river house,” as my mom likes to call it). The last night there was the night before “move-in day” on campus. I’d soon be going back to the gind, taking classes and focusing on getting a 4.0, just to make my dad happy. The phone rang and my Aunt Cindy called to tell us that Grammie had fallen in her bedroom; she couldn’t get up. My dad rushed home and took her to the hospital. The hospital told us that she had broken her femur. My dad stayed at the hospital, while my mom, brother and I went home and finished packing my things into the cars for move-in day. The next day was full of excitement: the all-campus picnic, new classes, a brand-new suite with my friends to live in and new-found hope because my grandmother would be having surgery the next day to fix her femur. As my day came to an end, I looked at my phone and saw that I had three missed calls and some voicemails. I called my mom back. My world stopped there. She called to tell me that my grandmother–my second mother–had passed away. I thought it was impossible. I never believed her. It was, simply, unreal to me that she was gone. This was the first time that I was not near a family member when they had passed away. I promised my grandmother that I’d be near her when she left us. I broke my promise.

I plan on focusing my project on how this coping was different than at other times in my life. I was not at home to cope with my family, as I had been in the past. I could only call my family members and share how I felt. I couldn’t stay at home and grieve. This was “coping at a distance.” It was different because I was older, as well. I want to show how I felt as though it was good to cope with the death of someone closest to me in this way; I was okay with her death. Even though I had promised her I’d be near her, I think that it was for the best. I feel that I wouldn’t had dealt as well if I had been near her at that time. This may seem like I am avoiding her death, but it is actually easier to deal with than I had ever thought. The phone calls will be an important way to organize my thoughts and my essay. I think that I can creatively weave my thoughts in with the highlights of these calls, the implications of them, as well as provide facts about coping at different ages and show some of the interesting ways that other people cope within my writing.

My research will consist of gathering facts about the coping process and the ways that it is different at various ages. I want to find some interesting ways that people have coped. I could possibly find documents, poetry and other forms of multimedia to include within or alongside my prose. I plan on interviewing my family members and discussing their thoughts and feelings about this situation. I may look at newspapers or magazines from August 30th, 2009, but I don’t think that I want to focus on that too much. I will research the uses of the telephone, starting at its very beginning.

I will use Susanna Kaysen as a mentor. Her ideas of being “trapped” will certainly help with some of my ideas I would like to explore further. I hope to use the multimedia aspects of both Momaday’s and Rankine’s work. Momaday’s connections to family will assist me in showing my family ties and connections and, especially, how those have been affected or changed through this coping process.

SAMPLE:

“Mr. Watston! Come here! I want you!” These are the words of Alexander Graham Bell: the first telephone call ever made and successfully received. He never met me. I never met him. He saw his invention change the world. It changed communication. It changed lives. He never saw how, years later, his invention would affect my life.

I’ve never been one of those people to plan out my writing. It simply comes to me on the spot and I have to write it then and there. I’m not sure where I want to start this paper, but I definitely want to use the idea of comparing forms of communication to the way that I was coping during the time after my grandmother’s death.