Cathy

A hero is defined as someone with good qualities. Who is of good character and has a positive outlook on life,a person who helps others, and motivates people to do better in the world. My hero is my Aunt Cathy. She was a beautiful woman with the qualities of an angel. Though I never got the chance to meet her, I know that by the stories I hear, and the people who care for her, she is definitely someone I look up to.

Living in a family of four other children, and being the only sibling who didn’t share the same father was hard for my Aunt. My grandfather, being a very abusive alcoholic, was cruel and unkind to Cathy. Being the oldest, she stood up for every sibling to my grandfather. She always put herself in front of everyone, whenever my grandfather went off into his drunken rages. She took the most abuse of any of the children. She stood up for herself and never backed down. She was a strong willed woman.

Aside from this everyone outside of her home adored her. She had a million friends and was loved by many. I remember my father telling me once that he got pulled over. The cop recognized my father as being Cathy’s brother, and said that if my dad promised him a date with Cathy, he’d let him go. Of course my dad agreed, but my aunt was furious. She went out with the cop out of love for her brother. She was closest to him.

At the age of seventeen she had, had enough, and moved out. My dad went with her and they adventured out into the world together. As my Aunt got older, she became very involved in charities. She donated all she could, and was a public speaker for many charity organizations. She cared only for others and hardly for herself. While giving a speech one day, she fainted in mid-sentence. She had a brain aneurysm. A blood vessel had popped in her brain, sending Cathy to her death. She was only thirty-one when she died. My dad was heart broken. He loved my Aunt more than anything; she seemed to be his inspiration. Unfortunately the young angel was taken from this life, and instead was placed in her rightful home, heaven.

My Aunt was a great inspiration to my father, which makes me feel that she’s a great inspiration to me. She had a very hard life, and in the end decided to rise above all her pain and help others, who had been in her similar situation. She was loved by anyone who met her, and will always be remembered as the violet-eyed angel who left the world all too soon.