Coming of Age Draft

February 2010 was the day that our family faced one of our biggest problems ever, which impacted us negatively, but also positively. It was a cold weekday morning, I woke up at about 6:00 to eat breakfast and get ready for school. As I walked into our family room, I asked my grandma, "where's mom?" She responded gently, "something bad happened to Kai, so mom and dad drove him to the hospital 2:00 this morning." I didn't know what to say, this isn't the first time it happened, but I was too young the other time. When he was 6, he had a medical issue called Wilms’ Tumor, which is a kind kidney cancer. I was finally old enough to realize that someone's life was at stake, my own brother's. My grandma said that his stomach was feeling very sore and unusual, so they rushed him to the hospital. I was only in 5th grade, so I was very worried and didn't know what to say. I still had to go through school before I could visit him.

Going through the school day was a terrible feeling. I was still in Elementary school, I should be having a great time because all the work is easy, and you get to play around all day. That was not the case. I had a queasy feeling in my stomach the whole day. Each class period was wasted. All I did was stare off into space, thinking about my brother. My heart had one-thousand beats per minute. I never had this type of feeling before, I felt confused and worried at the same time. 

It was finally 2:10, the time that my school finished. I quickly walked to the front of the school, we weren’t allowed to run. My grandma picked my brother and I up, and we drove to Kapiolani Hospital. As I walked in to the building, it had that hospital smell, which was like hand sanitizer. Chills were running down my body as I walked into my brother’s room.

The sight was disastrous, there were tubes going in his body. I felt like I was going to faint when I saw all the nasty guck being sucked out of his body. I was worried sick for him, I didn’t know if he was going to be okay or not. I was speechless. I didn’t know if it was right to ask my mom if he was going to die, but I was just too anxious. “He’s not gonna die, he’s gonna be fine.” I felt a sense of relief, but just the point of him being in the hospital worried me.

About a month later, the Punahou carnival was up and it was close by the hospital. My aunty and cousin took me and my little brother. I had one goal to do before we left, I was going to win my brother a stuffed animal. At this age, I wasn’t much a fan of roller coasters, so we mainly just played carnival games. There was one game in particular that I knew I wanted to play, it was the ring toss one. I have some pretty good luck on this game. So I knew I wanted to play this game, and win something for my brother. Sure enough, I won him a stuffed unicorn, but I also ended up winning him other stuffed animals. I was so excited to see my brother’s reaction to the prizes I won for him, especially because I never told him about it. When we got back to the hospital I said, “Kai look what I won!” He said, “Wow! You’re pretty good huh?” With a grin on my face I said, “I won these for you.” A big smile from the both of is brightened up the whole room. It showed my sympathy and care for him.

After the two months that my brother was in the hospital, he finally got out. He was happy because he hated hospital food and lying down in bed all day. Although he was not too excited for all the school work he had to catch up on. I learned a big lesson from this family incident. My mom now talks about it all the time. She says that we should never stay mad at anyone because you don’t want your last memory of them being angry, or making them sad. You’ll live your life in regret and sadness. What this incident did was help to make my family closer to each other, especially with my older brother. We realized that we should cherish each moment, because someone’s life could end at any moment. I try not to stay mad at anyone for a long time. I learned to love life, and live without any regrets.

Now, all my brothers are closer. Before, we just use to argue. We weren’t brothers, we were just people that were related to each other. It turns out that we all have a lot in common. My brothers now come into my room just to hangout. We do stuff for each other and just enjoy each other’s company. I like the way things are now, we fight and argue, but in the end, everything goes back to normal. Our family is just that much closer now. If this never happened, I don’t know what our family would be like. I’m sad that my brother got hurt, but I’m glad that our family is now closer than ever. The most important lessons are learned through bad experiences.