Relationships prove lasting significance

What are life's most important qualities? Why must we struggle everyday just to find that the best things we are given can be ripped away from our grasp so easily? Why is it that it rains so hard on such wonderful people?

I'm 16 now. I was 14 when I realized how easily life slips away. Isn't it terrible to find that out while still so young? We don't always know how important time can be until it runs out.

I figured this out through the most torturous pain I have ever thought I could come across. Convinced that I was invincible and unlike everyone else, I never thought I'd have such a hardship laid in the palm of my own two hands.

I was forced to say goodbye to her. My Aunt Von, a beautiful, young lady with a single child. The cancer took her away from us all in a blink. It was like a flash of hopeless time that each person in my family wishes we could change. We know we can't and that's the difficulty.

Now, being 16, I live knowing that time is so important to inner personality and emotion that if I don't take advantage of every single moment, I can still lose it just like that. Not every young person thinks like this. Honestly, it's still hard for me to remember it at times.

Until...it's currently awaking me again with an unmistakable amount of sadness.

My grandmother - Nana, as my brothers and I call her - was recently diagnosed with blood diseases and other little contributions all leading up to Leukemia.

Again, cancer has slapped me in the face, and this time it hurts as if the slap was turned into a punch. It's sinking into me that my family is of such great importance that I must acknowledge this in every way possible.

Many don't know this about me, but lately everyday I'm holding back a tear. That tear is a simple sign of caring. Sometimes I believe I care too much. Whether that is a weakness or a good quality, I don't yet know.

But what I do know is that the suffering that burdens my heart daily is knowing that what my Nana is carrying in her body is deepening its hold on her life.

Through my faith, I can see there will be light. Other circumstances aren't an option for me. I choose to look the other way.

She's bearing through the strongest chemotherapy provided, and I know she's okay.

Although knowing she isn't better than okay only brings the same fear along that I had with my Aunt Von. I'm being pierced with trials, watching others go through them.

Following my internal instincts, I take my own advice. Time is quality. People are for loving, so take advantage of it.

The tribulations and such that make me feel less than who I am are washed away now that I'm aware of this quality. Time is in life for a reason. It is life. We breathe it: time.