Nicholas Vanlerberghe
Brown City Jr./Sr. High School
Brown City

How does one write a report on a hero when they only have a handful of memories of that hero? Especially when every day those memories try to slip away from that hand like grains of sand in an hourglass trying to fall with the passing of time. Thankfully, memories, like sand, end up everywhere like in the picture of a young boy sitting on a tractor, or they seep through the siding of a little old farm house. All of it forming a long, twisting trail of sand that makes up one’s life.

Let us start at the beginning of this trail of sand. The trail is faint here with patches of granules to see, but I can still hear the slight whisper of a newborn's wails. I continue to follow the trail and I arrive at a farm. As I near the sand, I hear distant echoes of laughter, but it soon dissipates and surrenders to the sounds of a plow cutting through earth. As I get closer, I glide my fingers across the surface and slip back in time. When you look up, there is a young boy urging on a team of horses that is pulling his plow. He looks up and notices you and he waves but he quickly returns to his work. When I pull my hand from the sand I am standing back in the present.

When I get back to my house, expecting my journey to be over, I notice just how much of the sand is in my house. There is some sand wedged behind the picture of a young soldier, but the most sand is scattered around the house. No matter how hard you try, you will always step in it and go back to memories long forgotten. It seems every day is a new memory that you can explore. But most of these memories, although they are different, all take you back to about the same time. When that same young boy working the field and later joining the army, is now raising a large family.

Although there are many joyful memories from the beginning to the end of the trail, the end is laced with potent feelings of grief and sorrow. It is a feat for someone to slip back to these memories and not be overwhelmed with these emotions as you watch this great man in his battle with pancreatic cancer.

My grandfather is my Michigan hero. I never got to know him because, sadly, he lost his battle with cancer when I was still very young. But it is his life and story that make him my hero. My grandfather was a soldier, aircraft mechanic, farmer, and a father of 11 children.

Someone once said, "The time will pass anyway. You can either spend it creating the life you want, or spend it living the life you don’t want. The choice is yours." I personally believe my grandfather spent his life, not just creating the life he wanted, but trying to help me create the life I wanted for myself. If I ever need a little guidance, then all I need to do is find a trail of sand and slip back in time and I can see what he would have done in my situation.