“Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do” is a quote that was written on my dad’s headstone.
On August 8, 2019, on the third day of my senior year, I lost my father to Stage IV Colon Cancer. I will never forget how dark my life had gotten this day. My father was my mentor, my best friend, shoulder to cry on, and the best father anyone could have. I remember thinking ” I cannot do anything if he’s not here with me”. My dad had been sick in the hospital in the summer of 2019. He had developed bone cancer in his spine and he had to stop chemotherapy to have surgery. I hadn’t seen my dad in person for a few months because he was getting treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital. I would call him on FaceTime and he would fall asleep in the middle of our conversations, he would be confused a lot, and soon, it was very hard to talk to him. My dad was a fighter, he would never give up no matter how hard it got, but he knew it was time, he did not want to suffer anymore.

My dad had life insurance, but being that he had to stop working years before he passed away, he had to pay thousands of dollars to the Social Security office before receiving his disability money, and he has 4 daughters and a wife, it wasn’t enough for my sisters to have everything they needed and pay for me to go to college. I, unfortunately, did not have a college fund, or parents that made enough to pay out of pocket. The life insurance policy was not the best and if it was, maybe I would not have to worry about how I am going to make it through college each semester with this financial burden. If he had better life insurance, I would focus solely on school rather than student debt. Life insurance is very downplayed in the black community, and it is hurting a lot of families financially, including mine. During the summers and breaks, I work full-time at a doctor’s office during the week and another job part-time babysitting on the weekends so I can limit the cost of student loans I take out every semester.

Nursing is a career path that can be very expensive. In the fall of 2022, I will be attending Nursing school at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. This is an amazing school and I have worked very hard to get to this point. After completing undergrad and obtaining my BSN, I plan to work at Children’s Hospital in Birmingham for 2-3 years. After, I will further my education to receive my MSN to become a Nurse Practitioner. This path will not be easy, but it will only be as difficult as you make it. At the end of the day, you cannot run away from your problems, you have to face them because… life happens.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, the clock continued on.
“I’m so sorry for your loss.”
“I did everything I could to help him.”
“Say something please!”
Silence. Absolute silence overcame me as I sat in the familiar, red, upholstered chair in the church office of my elementary school. My eyes darted to the ground and I began fidgeting with the hem of my skirt. My seemingly invisible alcoholic father had met his match.
A week before the death of my father my mom was made aware that his $750,000 life insurance policy had been canceled. Despite my parents divorce, all financial responsibility for the funeral and other miscellaneous costs fell onto my mom as his entire family had shut him and us out of their lives. Private education was something my dad valued and fought for in life and my mom did everything in her power to keep us in the schools that had become our safe place. Due to my good grades I was able to receive financial aid for high school but the financial hole my dad had left us in was growing everyday.
At fourteen I got my first job; this was something my mother would have never asked me to do but something I knew I needed to do. By my junior year I was working three to four jobs at a time in order to pay for my car, gas, insurance, and to put money into my college fund. Being able to say I have never had to ask my mom for money is one of my proudest accomplishments. If my dad would have kept his life insurance policy, none of these things would have been an issue.
My mom was an entrepreneur who pursued graphic design, starting and owning her business for over 25 years. In order to keep up with expenses my mom had to put her passions aside and work a more traditional 9-5. When the time came to look at schools, it became obvious that the fancy private universities I had grown up hearing and dreaming about were not for me. The financial burden of college is one my mother and I can not bear alone.
If my dad had a life insurance policy there would be no stress about entering “the most influential years” of my life. I would not be overwhelmed by the guilt I feel everytime I put on my school uniform or talk about college. I would see going to law school as a next step not a dream. I have spent the past eight years of my life working hard to provide for myself and to help my family and I know that going to college is the next step. I plan to use my education to better my life and to support my family because in life or in death I never want my family to have financial burden keeping them from their goals.

When you go to bed at night, you expect that your mom or dad will be there to wake you up in the morning. You never think that your worst dream will come true not once, but twice. I never thought it would happen to me, until it did.

I was seven years old when my mom died. I thought then that I would never feel that kind of pain again. Until I did. I was 10 when my dad died. I lost my whole world before I was even a teenager. I was lucky that my grandparents were there and able to take my two brothers and my sister in to their home. They did the best they could with what they had.

However, my grandparents had never planned on having to bury their son or daughter in law and neither of my parents had life insurance. My grandparents were left paying for two funerals in three years, taking over bills my parents would have been responsible for and raising four children. This meant that there was no money for anything extra in our lives. We barely had basic needs covered and I began to realize that if I ever wanted to have a life different than what my parents lived, that I would be on my own.

By the time I was 15, my grandfather’s health was in a serious decline and he had a massive heart attack followed shortly by a series of strokes. My grandmother became his primary caretaker and, at the age of 16, I had to move out and that’s when I got my first part time job. At this same time, it became even more clear to me that if I was going to fulfill my parent’s dream of me going to college that I was going to have to do it on my own.

I have maintained a full-time job since I was 18. In addition to working, I have also gone to school full time and played sports. I have been working hard to be the person that I know my parents would have wanted me to be. To be a person my parents would be proud of. I often wonder about the “what ifs”. What if my grandparents weren’t in declining health? What if my parents were still alive? What if my parents would have had a plan to take care of their children when they passed away?

I will never know if they would be proud of me. I will never be able to see their faces when I walk across the stage and accept my high school diploma. I will never get to see their faces or hear the pride in their voices when I walk across that stage and accept my college diploma. But, with the help of your scholarship, I will know in my heart that I am fulfilling their dream of at least one of their children making a better life for themselves. And then, maybe I can finally wake up from the nightmare that started over eight years ago.