Gone Forever, 2006, by Danaka Turner

From MemoryArchive

Who: Danaka Turner
What: Gone Forever
When: November 2006
Where: Washington, Iowa

Throughout my life there has always been someone there for me. Andy Renoux was just like a big brother. He was a great friend to have and especially a great neighbor. He was strong and fought through many things.

When Andy was fifteen he was diagnosed with cancer. In the beginning, the cancer wasn’t bad. The older he got, the worse it became. At age sixteen it had taken over. He was in the hospital almost the whole year. As his parents were at the hospital with him up in Iowa City, his sister, Maggie, stayed with my family during the week and some of the weekends.

It was a cool sunny Saturday in mid March. I was sitting on Maggie’s bed in her room, smelling the sweet vanilla candle she was burning. At the time, we were home alone; at least we thought we were. All of a sudden we heard footsteps coming up the stairs. I asked Maggie, “Who’s coming up the stairs?”

She replied, “I’m not sure, I thought we were home alone.” Her mom and dad rushed into the room grabbing both of us. They held onto us as tight as they could with tears running down their faces. Maggie and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong. They sat their telling us that about thirty minutes ago, Andy was perfectly fine and ready to come home and see us. Fifteen minutes later, the doctors were rushing into the hospital room trying to save him. There wasn’t anything they could do to help him now.

As they were telling us what happened, tears started rolling down our faces. Salty water from the tears that had dripped down into my mouth had made me sick to my stomach. Maggie and I held onto each other as tight as we could, our hearts ached in pain till they couldn’t ache anymore. Knowing just a half an hour ago Andy was happy as can be, ready to come home and see us, then all of a sudden, within minutes, he was gone. The cool sunny day turned into a dark lonely night. As I sat there, I thought to myself, what am I going to do now? I lost someone so close that I loved like a brother.

As time went on, things started getting a little better for all of us. Maggie and I would sit in her room every now and then, thinking about all the great times we had with him. We would cry with each other and hold each other until we felt better. Till this day there are many things that make me think of Andy. I can’t listen to the song by Green Day, “The Time of your Life”, because he would always play his guitar and sing it to Maggie and I. He’s still with me and I think about him all the time. I’ll never forget the look on our faces when we heard he was gone. Time is passing by fast, but I’ll always keep him in my heart.