The day I got into my first car accident (which I will fully admit was my fault because I am an upstanding citizen of truth and honor) was also the day that I found out my Grandfather had a brain tumor. Almost unexpectedly, I had gone from a family never touched by cancer to a family right in the middle of it. It felt as sudden and damaging as my car accident, like this disease had seeped into the crevasses of my life too, infecting my daily motions with the anxiety and carelessness that came along with it.

My long-term college boyfriend had two grandparents die in the time I spent with him. Within the span of about a year, two of his mentors and heads of the family were gone, and there he was five hundred miles away at school, not able to cherish the time he had left with them. (Instead it was a heavy course-load and school counselors). His words of his grandfather still echo in my head, especially now: "No more snow shovels." A simple act, one which his grandfather enjoyed, he would not be able to enjoy any longer as he knew he would not be around to do such a thing come the winter.

My own grandfather's 'snow shoveling' would definitely have to be the cultivation of hot peppers. When my family and I visited him the Sunday after, my grandmother made a remark that brought this back in my mind: "But who's going to take care of all those peppers?" He usually grew a whole big flat of seedlings in the spring, an familiarity that's very absent now. In the late summer, there would be so many hot peppers he'd be stinking up the whole house making his sauce (of which you would only need a small coating of a pinky to set your mouth on fire). There's a picture of my uncle standing behind his kitchen counter, the whole thing pilled high with peppers of various kinds and colors, a sight which will now be much more muted.

The strength of a person is defined by their ability to react in a composed manner in times of distress. After time, we all find a way to cope.