Personal Narrative - Gabrielle Foust-Wollenberg Mrs...

Gabrielle Foust-Wollenberg
Mrs. Manternach
Composition I
9/1/16
And There He Was You Were ...
I had not yet experienced anything extremely humbling or thought inducing and there he
was you were ... On June 21 st of 2015, Father's Day in fact, I found my grandfather dead on the
dining room floor of my grandparents’ house. There were eight people staying there that night,
besides Grandpa: my uncle, dad, three cousins, my brother, my grandma and I. For some reason,
I was the one designated by God to find him. Was it fate? Maybe. Although the whole ordeal this
was traumatic, it also turned into a great learning experience. Discovering my grandfather on that
fateful day, taught me a lot about death and that I should cherish the little moments things in life.
Sunday, June 25 at 2:31 in the morning, I walked down my grandma's orange attic
staircase to go get a drink. As I turned past the doorway near my grandma's stash of plastic
containers and baking sheets, I saw that the dim light in the kitchen was on. I rounded the corner,
and sto p ped dead in my tracks. Not twelve feet from me, just past the kitchen corridor, laid my
grandfather’s lifeless body , pressed against the worn carpet. Blood that had come out of his
mouth spattered the floor and the blue lazy boy recliner, which his body had hit when he limply
fell out of his motorized scooter. So there I stood, shocked, to say the least. At first I did not
believe what I was seeing. I whispered across the room, “Grandpa? Grandpa?!” each time getting
more and more frantic, realizing what I had just discovered. My hands started to shake, my
airways closed up as if someone was choking me, causing me to gasp for the very breath keeping
me in this moment. I could feel my heartbeat throughout my entire body. My knees started to

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shake, causing me to fall against the wall for support, shaking my grandmother’s collectible
plates. I slid down the wall, holding my face in my hand, violently sobbing like an infant crying
for her mother. Again, I looked up, knowing that I needed to try to help. I picked myself up and
dried the tears on my cheeks, but to no avail. I tr ied y to walk past him to get my grandmother
and father . As I went to move I but was stopped as if a force field was holding me back.