When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade. But what if those lemons are too bitter to make sweet lemonade? I had received one of those bitter lemons. In fifth grade, I came home from a wonderful day at school and my mother told me she had stage four breast cancer. The first thing my little fifth grade mind thought was: Is my mother going to die? Which is really concerning when these kinds of things happen. Later that evening we bought an electric razor and my father shaved his hair. It was probably one of the hardest things he had to do. The next day I went to school and my teacher could automatically tell that something was wrong because I wasn't being my jolly, happy, lucky self. After school my teacher came up to me and asked if everything was okay and I said yes. I didn't want anyone to know what I was going through. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay My teacher didn't believe me, so she emailed my mom and asked her. My mother told him the truth. The next day, I had a meeting with the school counselor. She was kind and gentle and really wanted to help, but I didn't want help. I wanted to be left alone to deal with the situation in my own way. The counselor and I got to the end of our discussion and she said I could stop by whenever I needed help. I never saw her again. After the meeting with the counselor, I told myself “be happier” so as not to be sent back. My plan worked, I was playing and interacting with the other children as if nothing had happened. So during the school day, I completely escaped the fact that my mother was sick. But after school, it was a whole different story. At the start of chemotherapy, my mother was still my mother. She walked around, cooked, cleaned and played with the children. But after a few more treatments, I would come home and mom wasn't walking around anymore, it was grandma constantly running up and down the stairs getting things for my mom and us kids. After a while, I didn't come home anymore. I dropped off my backpack and went to play with my friends at the park. My only friend who knew what was going on was my best friend Yvonne. She and her family are truly the ones who helped me the most through this ordeal. They helped me forget that my mother was sick and made me smile and laugh every day. As my mother grew weaker, she wanted to do something with the family that would be meaningful and memorable, in case she passed away. And that's what she did. My mother loved calling radio stations for a chance to win the big cash prize or concert tickets. But the one she wanted the most was the Disney trip. She and my older sister would go downstairs, log into both computers and try to find Mickey on the Disney map. They did this twice a day and on the last day they stayed up until ten thirty at night and kept coming in all the time. A few days later my dad gets a phone call and it's a guy calling and saying he was a government employee and our water gauge was broken and needed repair. The man asked to speak to my mother and he told her the same thing, then we heard a woman's voice in the background saying to stop being so mean. This man was a radio host and my mother won the Disney trip. The trip was planned for four people to go to Disneyland, but we had seven people living at home in.