My Hero's Injustice: A Short Story

Although, a cliché, my nana’s passing was something that changed my life. But Mary Doherty was not a cliché. Not to say that the pain people go through during a grandparent’s death doesn’t hurt, but I believe that my nana leaving, particularly what she left me, has and will continually effect me as a person for the rest of my life.
There’s no other way to describe my Nana other than this simple statement; her liveliness would light up a dark room if it could. She embraced the positive, which is something I used to never be able to do. I got a bit annoyed sometimes because of how happy she was, since I was a pessimist. It wasn’t until after she died that I understood her outlook on life. In her mind, and thus in mine, you shouldn’t be upset
But saying that Nana loved her Irish heritage is an understatement. As soon as you walked in to her house, it was as if you stepped into an Irish store-everything was in her house was from Ireland. Everything from her crystal bowls from Waterford to her lace table runners were directly imported from our “homeland”. And oh how she loved the Clancy Brothers. She listened to their music so much that I now find myself humming “Parting Glass” and “Mountain Dew” like she would. Following her death, I began to look into my family history, as a way to subconsciously keep her spirit alive. I would find myself asking relatives questions about our family and if they didn’t know it, I would just look it up on the internet.
After a while, I learned all that I could about my family background but still found myself wanting to learn more history. This is when it dawned on me; I wanted to be a history teacher. The research I had put into history, whether it be family history or world history, was something I wanted to do my whole life and share it with kids, so they knew how important it was. As kids, we find ourselves not appreciating history however, I want to teach the next generation to love theirs, because it got them where they are
Before, I relied on her as my rock, she kept me whole. But after, she died, I learned how to keep myself whole by using some of the things she unintentionally taught me. Her deep love for her Irish background inspired me to become a history teacher as a way to show kids how important their background is, and how it has shaped them. But most importantly, her positivity changed my outlook on life, allowing me to think not only more optimistically but also more simply. It’s incredible how one woman could leave such an imprint on my life and I hope to one-day impact someone as much as she impacted