Positivity and Learning from Life

(I’m going to give a warning for mentions of loss and death. You can continue now :3)

When I think of positivity, my mind goes to some sort of weird stigma around it. I think of some sort of bubbly, sunshine-radiating person with blond hair and blue eyes that always spews out inspirational quotes while giving a white-toothed smile. However, when I really think about it, that’s not the post of positivity. The point is to be able to look at life, people, and circumstances and find a way to look at them with a new lens. This new lens gives you an ability to look back and help you realize that it had a place in your life, no matter what it was. 

I’ve faced more than my share fair of challenges in life. My life, just like so many others, has been filled with pain, heartache, and suffering. However, now that I look back on these events, I can see now that they were preparing me for more than what I could see at the time. I’m not going to pretend like these events didn’t affect me; they certainly made their mark on me as a child, and to this day I sometimes can’t help but think about the trauma these events caused me. Now, though, I’m able to see that there was always some form of hope in front of me, no matter the circumstance at the time. 

Because I was adopted, much of my family is rather older than me. My parents are currently both well into their fifties, and all my cousins on my dad’s side are full adults with paying jobs. Because of this, my grandparents and other relatives were much older than what the usual standard is. As a child, I simply thought that it was normal to have grandparents be well into their seventies- I only found that to not be the case fairly recently, truth be told. By the time I was old enough to have the constant drive to play all the time, my grandparents were mostly in the stage of life where they couldn’t play with me as much as they would want. My grandfather on my dad’s side had heart conditions, and my grandparents on my mother’s side both had health issues (Paw, as we called him, had lung cancer, and Grandma had memroy issues). 

There was one person in my family I could always count on to play with me and go with my silly ideas: Uncle Richard. Uncle Richard wasn’t actually my uncle; he was good friends with my dad, and after they graduated college, he was always a nearby presence because of his “issues” with living alone. By issues, I mean that he just was the type that didn’t do well on their own. No doubt, he was brilliant: he owned tons of books, and for a time he taught college-level English. When he retired, he came to live with my parents in a trailer. I can always remember peering inside and seeing the small thing being filled wall-to-wall with books of all shapes and sizes. 

As a child, I would always do my best to pull him out of the trailer so he could play with me. Keep in mind, he was well into his sixites, and I was a four-year-old with an overactive imagination and no other people to play with. In my mind, he was the perfect person to play with me. I would often lead him on my fantastical adventures, whether it be inside conducting a tea party with my stuffed animals, or exploring imaginary fantasy lands outside. He never could say no to my exploits; he allowed me to lead him on all sorts of fantastical adventures, the only time he would object being if he was ill. 

As I grew older, my desire to play lessened, and my sister entered the picture. She never possessed as much imagination as I had, but she did want company when I was busy with homework, so she succeeded me in pulling Uncle Richard out of his camper to play. 

The year I turned eleven, he was admitted into a nursing home. I found out that he had a heart condition; he had a minor heart attack at the Jackson State Fair, so after that he agreed to be put in the nursing home. I would still visit him fairly often, though, and he still greeted me the same way he had when I had been knocking on his trailer door. He couldn’t be as active, but he still loved hearing me talk about all the new things that had happened since the last time I had seen him. I always looked forward to these visits, and I never thought about a future without him. 

The inevitable happened. He passed away the summer before I turned thirteen. I remember feeling absolute shock when I heard that he had passed away in the nursing home. I remember feeling numb as I cried against my dad’s shirt. I had dealt with personal loss before, but this just felt so much more different than that. My world as I had known it was forever shattered. I remember coming to the realization that he wouldn’t be around to see me grow up. I had taken on his passion of reading, and he always encouraged me to read more. He had been proud of my proficiency in the language arts, and he especially enjoyed helping me with my English homework. I realized I had not just lost a friend, but a mentor as well. 

I remember being silent at his funeral. I remember looking to the open coffin before turning my head away, unable to face my new reality. I remember crying at night, bleary-eyed as I looked up at the ceiling, asking why God had done this to me. I was distraught; I didn’t know how I was going to cope with this loss. 

However, now that I’ve grown, I’ve realized that Uncle Richard has made more of an effect than I had known at first. I realized that he influenced me to create, and gave me more energy to create more than before. He encouraged me to follow my ideas wherever they took me, and helped me to realize my creative potential. He gave me a passion for learning more about the world and educating myself about things around me. He gave me an incentive to learn about language arts and the literary world. Most importantly, he gave me someone to talk to, someone to confide in, someone to be with me when my life was rough. He was really more than a family friend. He truly was my family. 

Author: Caroline Nations

I used to be Caroline Nations. If this is who you're looking for, I'm sorry. I'm Kai now. Seventeen, young and sweet, MSA student, and I'm not throwing away my shot.