The Unexpected Beauty

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Amanda Hughes English 1301-109 Dr. Murphy September 22, 2010 The Unexpected Beauty I sat there paralyzed. It was as if my heart had been pierced by the blade of reality. The impact of the blade shocked me, causing a flood of tears to fall from my eyes. Only moments before my mom had sobbingly said, “Your Great Grandma is gone.” My Great Grandma, Lily, had taken her last breath and was finally at peace, leaving me at war with my thoughts. “How can someone so precious just be gone?” It was as if the sunshine would forever be blocked out by the dark clouds of death. Lily, she was the flower that bloomed into the world and brought with her so much beauty, but like all flowers she had withered. After my tears subsided I found myself reminiscing. In essence she had been the source of my most valuable lessons. She was a vision of true beauty and a tower of strength. With her no longer in my world I discovered a whole new lesson in life, how delicate and precious life truly is. Lily was ridden with melanoma, skin cancer, from the age of twenty. At the time it was discovered, there was no treatment. The only way to eliminate the cancer, temporarily, was to remove the flesh that had traces of cancer on it. She learned in order to live she had to let go of her physical appearance and said goodbye to her youthful beauty piece by piece.. She managed to do so until the doctors had to start removing portions from the most noticeable place, her face. They started with removing her nose and soon after, her bottom lip. It was a horror story that had come to life, the unimaginable. I never knew my great grandma before this. As a child I thought it was amazing that my great grandma could take off her nose, a prosthetic. I did not know anyone who had a great grandma as wonderful as mine. As a child I was naive to the world’s ideas of beauty. As I got older I started noticing
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