And the winning story by Austin...

My Grandma taught me to never give up on what I'm doing. My grandma was a gifted and talented teacher in Arkansas. She was like my "second" mom. I saw her almost every day when I was about 7 years old.

She took me to her school almost every Friday. We had contests to see who could build something that helps every day life. I never won a contest with her class which were 8th graders, but she was proud of me for not giving up. She taught me how to play chess and to "think" when we played each other. It seemed like she said "think" after every other move. She also introduced me to legos. She would buy me little boxes of legos and then make me build them. Sometimes when I got tired, I would go play video games. If she caught me playing those games she would always say "Turn off those video games" and I would say "but I've built all the legos" (which I loved to do). Guess what she said after that.."Think!"

So I thought and thought. I remember there was a lot of snow on the ground one day so I went out there and started throwing snowballs at these two massive dogs that she had. Out of the corner of my eye I could see her smiling out of the window watching me. A few years past and it was pretty much the same, "turn off those video games...Think".

About a month before Christmas my grandpa told me that she was complaining about a horrible migraine and that she needed to go to the hospital. But since they lived in the country, it would take a good 45 minutes before they could get there. When they got there, the doctors couldn't tell what was wrong with her. She died after a few hours. After she died, they found out that she had an aneuryism in her brain.

I remember holding her hand at the visitation. I didn't know that I could cry that much but when I looked down at my shirt, it was soaking wet in tears. After that, all I remember from that day was me putting a rose on her closed casket and then my grandpa and I were the only ones left. We watched her go down into the dirt. I knew from that point on that my life would never be the same.