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Writing Sample(s) |
Light Foot Lytle All I saw was the red, blue, and white lights shining on the other side of my street. My heart The next few days were anything but fun, they were torture and nerve racking waiting for the news about how Chris was doing. I couldn’t eat and I sure as hell couldn’t sleep. I felt like my world was coming to a huge road block that I didn’t quite know how to overcome. Chris Lytle was diagnosed as a juvenile diabetic at a very young age. He had grown very used to being able to poke himself with that sharp needle everyday and taking his blood. One major problem Chris had forgotten his medicine when he was on vacation and didn’t think it was necessary to tell the parents of his friends. Chris wanted to be normal like any other kid and he had gone without his medicine before but not this long. He just wanted to go for a little while without having to prick himself and be known as the kid with an illness. When he got home he didn’t feel well and asked his mom for a glass of water as he went to lie down on the couch. I had just gotten home from a long afternoon at the golf course having played eighteen holes of golf. That is when I saw the chaos taking place in the neighborhood. The ambulance arrived in a matter of minutes and those are the lights I had seen. “Mommy is he going to be ok?” his younger brother Jake asked his mom. “Bubby, wake up please wake up,” Paige yelled as he was being taken away. I stood there and watched the ambulance drive away. Once it was completely out of my site I turned and headed back home and cried to my mom. She told me that everything was going to be okay and that he was in good hands and that everyone would be seeing him very soon. She told me to go get sleep and that it would be the best thing for me to do since I couldn’t do anything else. She was right and wrong because there wasn’t anything I could do—Chris had passed away earlier in the night. It was so hard to go to school the next day knowing that one of my classmates, or better yet, a good friend had passed away. The whole entire school was in complete and utter chaos. Classes weren’t the same and the guidance office was allowing people to come down and just grieve and try to help each other cope with everything that had happened so suddenly. I remember not going to any of my classes that day. I just sat down and cried and talked about how much Chris meant to me, with some of his other close friends. Even with all the students having red blood shot puffy eyes, we all came together and decided that Chris was worth remembering and we would never be the same without him. It took me a long time to even attempt to accept the fact that he was not coming back. I used to just sit and remember the days when he and I would have water fights. I remember the best one we had he had this over-filled neon green balloon he came around from the back of the house and drilled me right in the leg. He was soaked from head to toe and said that is why he had to get me because it was not fair that he was soaked and I was still dry. Or when we would play flash light tag, everyone always used to tell us that we were too old but we didn’t care because we were having fun and more importantly we were doing it together. He would always cheat because when we would play flash light tag he would always have a walkie-talkie and him and his teammate would communicate that was to find people faster. Chris was a hero in my eyes and still is to this day. His smile would always light up a room because his smile was like the sun always bright and shining. Before I ever met Chris I was very well known at school, sometimes not always for the best things. Some people looked at me like I was some hardcore bitch, which was not necessarily true; I just know how to stick up for myself. That is what made it so much harder to realize that he was gone and that when I needed it his smile would not be there to cheer me up. “Will things ever be back to normal?” one student was heard saying one day at school about two weeks after Chris had passed. Things were still rocky and people were still trying to get back into the swing of things. So things were finally back to a happy environment at school. I still remembered him everyday but especially on the important days like the day he passed and on his birthdays. Remembering Chris didn’t get any easier as the years passed. We finally formed a website where people could go and write on the walls about how much Chris meant to you. It was just a matter of a few days before those blank bare walls turned into colorful memories. The town seemed bright again almost like we had his smile back. But I didn’t and that is all I wished for and the sad things is that I used to take that for granted because I never imaged that Chris would be taken from me and let alone at such a tender age of fourteen. “Did Chris really deserve to die?” These words came out of my mouth fairly often. I honestly felt like this was so unfair and as selfish as it may sound I really felt like I didn’t deserve to have Chris taken from me. Because I needed him here to help me through my problems and to go through high school with me. I always thought of Chris as an amazing person and in some ways I feel like I took him for granted. I looked at him as just one of my friends not someone who would change my life forever. We may not have talked everyday even though we did only live about ten houses down from each other. To this day, almost four years later, I still have a hard time accepting the fact that Chris is gone. But from Chris I learned a world of things starting with that I do take things for granted a lot of the time. He also taught me that life is very precious and that helping people can be worth something someday. Chris never looked at me as that snobby girl, he looked at me as a real person and accepted the fact that I was so outspoken. He also taught me to stick up for myself but not in such a harsh way. Since Chris passed my classmates and I decided to get together and do some things for Chris. So we decided to raise money from everyone in the school and get some things dedicated in Chris’s name. For the next few weeks we collected money and did everything in our power to get as much money as we could. With the money we were able to get a boulder that sits out front of the high school and is engraved with his picture and some of his favorite lyrics and quotes, and we couldn’t forget the guitar since he was so attached to that thing. We were also able to give the rest of the money to his family to help pay for the funeral service and anything else they would have wanted to use it for. To help me through this all I am actively involved in an organization called ChIEF; which stands for Christopher’s insulin and education foundation. I feel like it truly helps me come to terms with the fact that he is gone and won’t be coming back from vacation. Every person involved in this wears or at least owns a purple bracelet with the word ChIEF written on it along with Chris’s initials. I have never taken the bracelet off and will always wear this bracelet around my wrist to support Chris and to carry on his memory in my heart. Chris was probably one of the most amazing people that I have ever met. He would always make me feel like I mattered, and for someone to do that for you is just remarkable and just plain amazing. I will never be able to fully come to terms with the fact that I no longer have that kind of person in my life; he was not only a friend to me but more of a teacher. He taught me more in the few years that I knew him than probably anyone else. I learned life lessons from a kid so to speak; him being only a month older than me but it seemed like he was so much more mature and knew a lot more than kids our age. Chris is still with me in spirit and heart and is still continuing to teach me things through the years. I will always remember that smile and that laugh and I can’t wait to hear that voice of his again. I hope I’m making Chris proud and I have grown from this whole situation I feel like I honestly grew up so much because of it. |
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