Love is Family

Tears were rolling down everyone’s cheeks. The room was silent. I looked around and I knew it was not the appropriate time, but I manage a negligible smile spread across my face. For the first time in months- better yet in years -my family was together. Not a single time had I seen my brothers and sisters, yet along my parents together. The phone rang. I picked up the phone gingerly, surprised that someone had finally called. A voice I had never heard before spoke. “Is this the Maldonado family?” the deep voice asked with concern. I quickly answered with a yes. “I have some bad news. Carlos Rivera has stopped breathing.” I could not believe this. “He’s dead,” I whispered. My older sister burst out in tears. My brother-in-law had disappeared for two days and no one knew where he was. My nieces, who thought their father had gone to Miami to work had just found out their dad was dead. I could sense they wanted to cry. To burst out crying, to pour out their emotions, but all I saw were blank faces showing no emotion, their bodies trembling in shock. My sister grabbed the keys from the kitchen table, ran out to the parking lot, and drove away in her beige Toyota Avalon. As the tires screeched, I wondered in my inner world, thinking how this was happening to us. No one ever thinks anything is going to happen to him or her, but in reality, anyone can lose his or her love ones. My parents, whom I had never seen together in years, were talking to my older brother and sister who had not seen each other in months. Who would have ever thought that a tragedy had to happen for my family to become one, to be together without fighting? Sometimes I wonder why showing that we still love each other has to be this hard. We had never been together, supporting each other in a time of need. Everyone living in his or her own never knew who was going through what. It was not until the demise of my brother-in-law that my family started getting together more often, that we started to share and talk more often about our troubles, expressing our thoughts and ideas without having to dispute. From this experience I have learned that we should love our family no matter what, that we should value the love for each other because there will be a time in which we will need support from our love ones. I personally, have opened up to my family, and I have seen how we have changed in the past three years from each one of us being isolated to being together. I think that if we ever have problems with anyone in our family we should try to fix the problem because the love within each other is very important and valuable in our lives.