After 3 months from home I was went back for Christmas. My brother came home from Minnesota like a mess; hair disheveled, feet pushing through the bottom of his worn shoe, and wearing the ashamed attire of over washed sweatpants and a holey sweatshirt. He had no patience for my parents who work furiously to send him and I to private schools to get a good education. His idea of independence and justice started and ended with himself, and if any one had anything to say to him about his appearance or need to figure his life after high school, he quickly retreated behind the walls of a sharp display of unappreciative attitude. This, plus a 21 month old foster child, a 21 year old daughter miserable with the lack of direction for her life, and the arrival of me, caused a few wrinkles and gray hairs for my mother and father. They were both sick and the feeling of warmth for the Christmas season was bogged down to a stressful time of tension and time-bombs.
           My father had cancer when I was younger which was a blur to me because I never remembered hearing anyone talk about it. He still suffers from pain because of it. Then over break my mother found out she had a growth that needed to be removed. After going back to school, I found out she was to have surgery to remove it. She assured me "it was nothing." But still I prayed and thought about what would happen if she were to have cancer. Who would take care of my foster brother while she was being treated? My father would need to work overtime at the firehouse to pay for hospital bills. I planned that if this happened I would quit my 30,000 dollar school and the basketball team to return home and take care of Malik. I would maybe take some classes at a community school and work a couple of days, and take care of the house. If the worst happened I was prepared. But I wasn't ready. The guilt of all the mistakes you made haunts you when someone you love is sick. Remember that time I yelled at you for not leaving me alone mom? I screamed and told you I hated you? Now you’re in a hospital bed getting operated on and I am 900 miles away. How dare I. After someone gets sick, it’s almost like they've always been sick. A ticking clock just waiting to go off. Like John Irving said when he spoke of the change of a baby's breath from sweet innocence to sour, a change to the decaying of his body with each passing day. 
          My coach’s sister died over break and his father just last week. I wrote to him a little what I felt wondering whether my mother had cancer or not as we waited for the test results. I said that although it’s easy to torture yourself over the mistakes you made or the memories you miss with that person, that that doesn't matter when someone dies. What matters is that you take everything that your loved one invested and inspired you to and live on their legacy. After writing that letter I felt ready. I was ready to do what my mom did when her father died, and that was to thank him for the legacy that he left behind for her to follow. The legacy of love, truth, kindness, and might. People are scared of death because it’s the end. But it’s never the end. Because the cycle continues, you can only keep things alive by living, and that is what you must do. Live. And live well.