My Namesake

name·sake [neym-seyk
–noun
1. A person named after another
2. A person having the same name as another

I was named after Nikolai Gogol, my father's favorite author. Not a name that would be found in my culture, in fact, I have never met another Gogol in all of my life. But that's getting off from my story. One day, my father was going on a train ride to visit his grandfather in October 1961 there was a terrible accident that almost took my father's life. The book that held my father's favorite story by Nikolai Gogol saved him, it was for that book, I am alive and my father didn't die. I remember feeling like I didn't even know my father's past, like there was a part of him that I didn't even know. I asked him that night: "'Is that what you think of when you think of me? ... Do I remind you of that night?' 'Not at all... You remind me of everything that followed" (123-124).
I learned something about my father that night, but I also learned that the lowest, most painful part of someone's life, in this case my father's almost death, if you have the courage and the strength, you can turn it around. My father put that terrible part of his past behind him in a way, I guess, when he decided to name me Gogol. Something that could have reminded him of that accident, but instead whenever he thinks of Nikolai Gogol, he thinks of me. Turning something as terrible as that into something that in someone's eyes is a miracle or amazing, that's a trait everyone should learn in life.