My Name Is Alice Grace Bowler

• Emily Finocchiaro, Grade 8
• Short Story
• 2009

My name is Alice Grace Bowler, and I’m writing this…..so that I never ever forget how traumatic this was, but it’s also something that I’ll one day see.
So here I begin……In life everyone has their own experience that they know deep within them, they’ll never forget…this is mine.

It was the 13th of April 1992, and my family and I were on our way to a place that I only know to well.
It was the hospital. Not the hospital that I knew, never the less it was still a hospital, and the reason why we were travelling to this hospital, was because, my grandpa, was dying.

While we were in the car, on our way to the hospital, my mum was on the phone, my dad driving and my three oblivious brothers were playing their Nintendo Ds’s, while I had my music BLARING into my ears so loud that it hurt to hear anything else but the words that exploded from my small earphones.

15minutes before we were there, it all set in, the pain, the lose of breath and the memories that I hoped to have that I now knew would never come through…like him seeing me get married or him smiling at me because I graduated from school. By the time I finished my sorrowful on look we were there….waiting in silence apart from the odd BRUST of held back tears.
I tried to hide the…fear and the pain…But I wasn’t succeeding…so at the hospital I situated myself away from everyone, wiped my face clean of all emotion, and just let the tears from my eyes, slowly, slide down my cold, wet face.

As I waited, I thought and that was the worst thing to do, to think of what Had and Hadn’t come to pass, it started to pain my stomach. After about and nearly two hours my dad called me and asked if I wanted to say goodbye, it hit like a tone of bricks slamming into my chest, I knew what he meant, he meant that I would never again see my grandpa again.
I walked in the room, his normally happy cheery Scottish face was now as white and paper and cold or maybe that was me. It frightened me like when you are six dreaming about the Boogie monster, though this was no boogie monster. I placed my cold hand on his and then I said that I was here….and then he sucked in his last breath and…..died.

But now even though its over I still feel that constant strickening in my stomach and feeling that at any second I will vomit, I also have a constant nightmares never leave my side always following.
But I see the happiness out of all this trauma, I known that he is in a much better place then I’m in and that one day I know I will be there too joining him thing…its sad but I the ending is what brings me peace.
The End :)