2026 Awardee – Lydia Tressler – Pleasant Grove High School HS

The Shape of my Memory

I’ve shared my story with friends, family, therapists, and even strangers, but each time, I grapple with where to begin. My earliest memories are a blend of laughter and chaos—born in 2008 into a big, lively family with siblings who filled the house with noise and love. Despite the warmth, I sensed an undercurrent of tension: a father whose anger erupted too often, walls scarred by his fists, and a mother’s quiet tears after their arguments. Even as a child, I felt the weight of something unspoken, a sense that not everything at home was as it seemed.

I remember vividly leaving my house at what felt like the middle of the night to my six-year-old brain and piling into the car with my other scared and confused siblings and driving to a parking lot where we would sit until my dad had been taken care of. I knew that what I was experiencing was not normal and that the contention in my house was still because of him. 

I still loved my dad. He would come to my soccer games and take me up to the water towers afterward to look out at the lights. I loved trying to sneak into his truck so he would take me to work with him. I loved the game nights, all of my siblings fighting to be on his team. I loved when he would come in from work, and my siblings and I would struggle to take his work boots off his huge feet. I loved it when he cooked. I would sit at the kitchen counter and watch as he made dinner, and he sang music on the radio. It was in these moments that I thought that he could do no wrong. 

He was a tall man, handsome and agreeable; no one else thought he could do anything wrong, either. I was 7 years old when he died. I didn’t know it then, but he took his own life. I was shattered. I did not understand the concept of death, especially for someone who has been with me my whole life, someone who told me not even two days before that he would take me out to dinner because I missed my school Halloween party. 

I remember sitting on the couch in our living room. I stayed home sick that day with my grandparents watching my youngest siblings and me while my mom was out looking for my dad, who had walked out the night before. I watched as two cops walked up to the door, looks of pity and regret etched on their faces. I watched as my grandmother went out to meet them. I watched as the horror bled into her expression as tears began to form in her eyes. My grandfather went out next, wrapping his arms around his wife as he talked to the cops. The next thing I remember was sitting in my grandparents’ house, my siblings, aunts, and uncles in the room with us. That’s when my mom told us that Dad wasn’t coming home. 

My little seven-year-old heart shattered along with my brothers and sisters. I remember the funeral, all of us crowded in a small room with people crying and trying to get one more look at my father before he would be buried, along with the hearts of a wife and seven children. It’s hard to remember the years after that, I struggle with remembering things even now. But a few years after my dad’s death, we moved; his life was engraved into the foundations of the house, and my mother was out. I was sad to leave. The echoes of laughter mixed with crying and screaming of my early childhood were etched into the walls, and like my mother, I needed out. Looking back now, I think that moving saved me and put me on the path so that I can get to the place I am today. We were able to start fresh, no longer being seen as “that family”. I started at a new school, I made new friends, I made crushes and frenemies. Things had begun to settle; I still felt the lack of my dad, but it was healing. 

But when I was ten, things changed again. My oldest brother, 16 at the time, took his life. Kaden and I were close; we bonded over music and movies. He was a total nerd, and I thought he was awesome for it. I can easily recall all of the Sundays my brothers and I would play video games, from smash to Minecraft, he never left me out. He was one of the smartest people I had ever met. He was a coding genius. Two weeks after he died, he was scheduled for an interview with Adobe for an internship. Kaden was my hero; he was smart, funny, witty, and everything that I wanted to become. But being his kid sister, I was never aware of the battles that he fought on a daily basis. 

I remember that night so clearly; it was the day before Easter in 2019. My mom dropped me and all my siblings, other than Kaden, off at my grandma’s house so my mom could do some last-minute shopping. My mom ended up going back to the house to pick up Kaden. I remember standing in my grandmother’s kitchen, watching TV, when I heard my grandmother yelling on the phone. My grandma is one of the most genital and angelic people you will ever meet, so hearing her yell was a new experience for me that told me something was wrong. Even though I had been through this before, I still thought that whatever was happening could not be that bad. We had already gone through our trial; why would we have another? 

My grandma would not tell us what was going on while she cried on the phone. Other than my older sister, who was panicking, I was the oldest, and I tried to keep my younger siblings calm and tell them that everything was okay while something in me was screaming that I was lying. My mom came over, and the worst sense of deja vu overwhelmed me as she sat us all down to tell us that Kaden was gone. That night, we camped out on the floor of my grandparents’ living room. Quiet whispers of my aunts and uncles lulled me to sleep after I had finally run out of tears. In the morning, we woke up to the worst Easter Sunday I ever had to live through. Even after these events, my life would take years to settle. 

I have gained and lost so much: family, friends, hopes, and dreams. Yet, through every loss, I found strength I never knew I had. These hardships have shaped me into someone resilient, compassionate, and determined. Looking back, I realize that while I cannot change the past, I can choose how I move forward. My story is not just one of pain, but of growth and hope—a reminder that healing is possible, and that even in the darkest moments, we can find light.