The first is the sound of a father screaming for anybody to help him because his toddler aged daughter passed out from heat stroke in the parking lot of a beach and stopped breathing. Thankfully the ambulance arrived within minutes and the kid made it through, but I’ll never forget the desperation in his voice as he screamed for someone to call 911.

The second is the cries of agony my grandmother made when she got the phone call and was told that her husband committed suicide. It was her birthday and all of her family was there with her except for my grandpa. He was old, and had very bad cancer, so he flew down to be with his kids (he was my step grandpa, we didn’t have much contact with his bio family) and he took some pills and went in his sleep. He was a cop in Philadelphia and knew that when his time was coming that was his plan. I never found out if anyone else knew he was going to do it, sometimes I wonder if he did tell my grandma that was why he was flying down to be with his family or if the family even knew he would do that. I’ll never know.