Dana - 2005: English Essay

Dana Edwards  03/11/2005

English 8, Section 12

My Being; Hopelessly Secluded Into a Reality of Guilt, Pain, and the Past

"The ceiling was wooden and deteriorating, and for some reason oddly familiar. I was lying on the hard wooden floor in a stupor; staring at the ceiling. For a moment, I couldn't remember where I was. Then it came to me; this was my house. It is in Colorado and it's very old. It was the cheapest one I could find when I moved from Europe. Yesterday I went for a walk with my family. It is the winter of 1969. 1 was daydreaming. I recalled the recent assassination of President Kennedy; how devastated the country was. He was sitting in the back seat of the car when the bullet hit him; a highspeed hunk of metal penetrated his skull and ended his life in an instant. just like ...

The memory hit me like a block of wood, as vivid as daylight; my brother standing in the cold outside at night. It was 3 A:M and he was standing outside of our bunker in Auschwitz, and I had no idea why. He was just standing there with an expressionless face, waiting for something. I watched him stand there for almost one minute. I was about to yell for him to come inside, but something kept me quiet; something that even now I do not understand. And then, I heard shouts in German and the sound of a gun firing. My brother hit the ground, dead.

I felt dizzy. The roof was spinning. Purple leprechauns danced in front of my eyes. Everything went black ...

'So, Mr. Bentman, your wife tells me that you have been blacking out lately.'