2023/Isabella -21519

One of the many struggles of being a military child

Only a few months ago I was on a plane to Texas to see my family for Christmas. The way back was pretty tiring but I was happy to be back home in Italy. Maybe a week later my dad got a call from his sister. He was trying to find nice outfits. “For what?” I thought to myself. They wouldn’t tell me no matter how much I asked. The next day, he gathered us in the dining room; I thought I had done something bad and was now in trouble. “Your grandpa passed away on Thursday”. Words that shook me. Words I wasn’t prepared to hear, yet knew they were coming soon. And there we were; hopping on a plane back to Texas for his memorial. When we got there, we rented a car to drive all the way from Dallas to Abilene. The memorial was on Wednesday; from what I remember we had gotten there on a Monday. We met with my grandma, aunt and her husband. I clearly remember eating Mexican food from “Rosa’s”. My aunt would say how different and wrong it felt to drive to Abilene without my grandpa. We waited and relaxed for a day until on Wednesday, it was time for the memorial. When we got there we met up with lots of my family (I couldn’t remember ANY of them) and the memorial started. We didn’t do much but my aunt had prepared a slideshow with pictures from grandpa’s past, and the background music included some of his favorite songs, then the pastor of the church said a prayer, my dad gave the speech he prepared and we went to eat some delicious homemade food. I think what upset me most was the fact that my grandpa was blind from all his years of diabetes and heart attacks, so he had never, not even once in his life, seen my face. The day after the memorial, Thursday, we flew back to Italy. The trip there was: Venice, London, Dallas, and back: Dallas London Venice. I made it home and didn’t even eat. Usually when I’m stressed or anxious, I have no appetite and feel like I just ate 10 McDonald's cheeseburgers, at least 5 large fries and 2 McFlurries. I was supposed to start school on the 17th of January, but because of the memorial, I started on the 23rd. One thing I’m extremely thankful for is music, especially a kpop group called BTS, because I could always rely on their music to comfort me, and help me cope with anything bad in my life. Now I’m here, at school, March 20th 9:00 A.M writing a story about the struggle of not being able to see my family as a military child.