August 22, 2009

My mom and I are in the car on our way to my relatives house for a fun cookout by the pool, it
is late in the afternoon and the sun is beating down on my face through the window. The drive is short
but in just one instant it felt like time stood still. Just as my mom and I start to turn on to the road where
our destination lies, my mom gets a phone call. When she answers our lives will be changed forever. My
uncle, Raymond, is on the phone. I hear his faint and frantic voice slip through the small holes of the
speaker in the phone. He mumbles out the dreadful words, We lost Ramy. Ramy is my cousin who is
just a year older than I, my best friend as a child. My mother immediately says, Well we can find him
Ray, dont worry the police will find him. My uncle shouts back through the phone, No Linda! He is
gone! Ramy is dead. I lost it. By this time my mother had parked in the driveway of my relatives house.
My father steps out the door with an excited look on his face ready to greet us completely unaware of
the tragedy that has just been dropped on our family. I step out of the car and drop to the ground like
the life has just been ripped out of me. I felt as though happiness would never be a part of my life again.