I 

got a text from my mom on a 
hot, busy afternoon in July. 
Of course, all of your July 

afternoons are hot and busy when 
you spend so much time taking care 
of 7-year-olds that you almost have 
no time to take care of yourself. The 
text read, “Call Dad. It’s important.”

My Nana had been sick for years. 

Ovarian cancer is a relentless battle, 
one that she had both lost and 
conquered gracefully. I braced myself 
for the news as I dialed the number, 
subtly noting that there really is no 
such thing as “bracing yourself.”

But the news my dad broke to me 

over the phone, as I stood alone in the 
woods getting eaten by mosquitos, 
wasn’t the death of my grandmother. 
It was my dog — a victim of cancer 

as well. Boomer was put to sleep that 
same evening. I wasn’t going to make 
it home from camp in time to bid him 
a formal goodbye, so Facetime had to 
suffice.

I shed tears on the screen of my 

iPhone and felt real loss for the first 
time in my life.

I felt something else too, though. 

Something so strange I wasn’t sure I 
could even talk about it: relief. I was 
relieved that it wasn’t my grandma. 
Emotions are complex and hard 
to decipher. Sometimes we simply 
can’t comprehend them. Sometimes 
they’re too overwhelming and the 
dissonance is too discomforting that 
all we can do is push them aside and 
continue to live our lives.

And that’s exactly what I did. 

I finished the summer with an 
acute 
sense 
of 
accomplishment 

and tried to reflect on everything 
I learned: taking care of kids is 99 
percent instinct, takes 100 percent 
commitment and energy, but is one of 
the most gratifying things I’ve ever 
done. I learned that the innocence of a 
7-year-old girl with so many mistakes 
to make and so much to learn still 
ahead of her is both refreshing and 
nostalgic. It made me wonder what I 
would do differently if I were in her 
shoes and could do it all again.

Life after camp seemed to revolve 

around only one thing: college. It was 
hard to breathe with the omnipresent 
weight of the future on my shoulders. 
It was supposed to be an exciting 
time for me, but the thought of 

leaving the people and places that 
watched me grow up stung a little. 
And the thought of everyone who had 
weathered the last four years with 
me moving on to a new life scared me 
most of all. 

Amid of all my end-of-the-summer 

activities, I got a call, this time, from 
my mom. My response was, “You’re 
telling me this over the phone?”

So I got in the car and drove home 

in violent sobs, almost pulling over at 
one point to throw up on the side of 
Woodward Avenue.

The next day we were on a plane 

to New York. It was good to see my 
dad’s family. And it was good for my 
dad to see my dad’s family. I learned, 
that week, that everyone handles 
grief differently; the prescribed five 

Wednesday, January 31, 2018 // The Statement
6B

Photo courtesy of Sydney Laub

How Did I Get Here?

BY SYDNEY LAUB, CONTRIBUTOR

