When I was a child, I wanted so badly to be fiercely independent. I didn't want to have to depend on anyone, especially any adult. So when my mother left my sister and I in care of our grandparents for a year while she worked on an MA degree, I tried to do as much as I could by myself. High up on the list was getting myself to school on my bicycle. Even on days when it would snow or rain, I would set off before my grandpa would drive off to work so that he wouldn't be able to offer me a ride.

At least one time, this willful streak of mine lead to some problems. It was a cold and rainy day. The rain stuck to the ground and froze in a thin sheet of ice. My bike slipped and slid all over the sidewalk, the road the grass. I scraped my legs, my hands, my face. Unwilling to concede defeat, I kept getting back up even though I was cold, dispirited and had tears of pain welling up in my eyes. Halfway to the school, my grandfather pulled up in his big, brown old man's car and put my bike in the trunk and set me in the safe, warm interior to drive me the rest of the way to school.

My grandpa's whole life was like that. He regularly volunteered at the local hospital. He received the sacrament of Holy Orders as a deacon of the Roman Catholic Church to aid in visiting the sick, the homebound, the grief stricken. After seeing him pouring out his life into the lives of his family, friends and strangers, these past few years have been hard as I've slowly watched his mind slip away and his body grow more and more frail. Little by little, my grandpa needed his family and friends to take care of all of his needs until at last he could not hold onto this life any longer and he passed away into the next.

At his  passing I've come to fully realize that I don't want to be fiercely independent anymore. I want to have people I can depend on and share my inner most secrets with. I want to have loved ones that are there for me when I fall and for whom I can be there for when they fall. And to some extent I have found that. But I have not found it in abundance and I carry some secrets that I find too heavy and burdensome to share with those who love me.

At my grandpa's burial service today, each family member was given a rose from the arrangement that had lied on top of the casket. I took one that was half wilted and dying for many times this is how I feel. This wilted flower, unlike the others, still had its leaves attached. It's thorns were sharp but it's petals were delicate. It's leaves look crushed and it's petals were wilting, yet it was alive. One of my uncles approached me with a vibrant, healthy rose and offered it to me so that I would have one that wasn't wilted. I declined his offer. That rose was not me.

[Editor's note: content censored to avoid giving offense.]