Growing up, you replay your childhood memories over and over again in your brain, “a tiny mirror in my head, a memory screen,” which influences how you perceive life (Magoon). Being a kid offers many great memories to hold on to, and bad memories can also have a significant impact about the way someone feels because they “cannot help but see.”(Bradbury). In your life the things you hold on to affect you day to day. You cannot help but remember significant memories and parts of your childhood as you continue through life.

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        Growing up, my entire family spent the summers in Cape Cod together. Every year,  we would all go down to the house and spend as much time with each other as possible. Year after year of making countless amazing memories and fun, vacations never got boring. Cape Cod became a place that brought so much joy and happiness to us, it was beautiful. My grandparents were the center of everything, they held the family together. They were the center of our family, and many amazing memories were made there that won’t be forgotten.

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        A few years ago my grandfather passed away, our family was impacted greatly by this. Our family is very close, we were always taught that family is the most important thing we could ever have, and that we should never let anything get in the way. The house in Cape Cod is now a place that is simultaneously beautiful and brutal to my family, because it holds a deeper meaning to us, “the memory of that visceral love,”(Nguyen). It is tied to our innermost, visceral feelings, not in our brains, but deep down inside.

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       We grew up there, it’s the place where we always got together and my grandfather would tell us all these crazy stories and teach us valuable (and not so valuable) life lessons. Family gatherings and Cape Cod would never be the same without him. My grandfather was the center of all of us, which made it such a beautiful place. We have such great memories, but now without him down at the Cape with us, this memory becomes brutal. Our time together as a family was beautiful, but his loss made the Cape bittersweet because now we just have his memory and feel his absence.

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        Without words, memories, and stories, life would a boring, dreadful, and pointless place. They allow us to enjoy life and think about the amazing possibilities that we can have in our life times. In our childhoods we are taught about life in the most simplest form, based off stories and memories. Without it our society would be a dystopia. Words and memories bring connections to our lives that impact how we view the currentness of our world. It is important to remember through life's challenges to hold on to the cherished memories you have made and understand how they made you the person who you are today.