LEWISTON — Lewiston Middle School seventh-grader Patience Rousseau, 13, found out last week she won a statewide writing contest, and now she’s in national competition.

What she wrote shows more than her literary talent. It demonstrates the strength of a girl whose world turned upside down after the death of her mother.

“Her letter will make you cry,” School Principal Shawn Chabot said.

Rousseau participated in “Letters About Literature,” a program in which students wrote to authors about how they made a personal connection with the author’s books.

Rousseau chose Ann Martin’s “Main Street” series, about two sisters who lost their parents in a car crash and had to move to a new town to live with their grandmother.

What happened to Rousseau was strikingly similar, only it wasn’t fiction.

Her letter reads: “On May 7, 2011, I lost the most important person in my life, my mom.” After her mother died, “It was all a blur,” Rousseau wrote. “I had to move from Rockwell, N.C., to Lewiston, Maine, with my grandma.”

The day her mother died started as a typical Saturday. Rousseau realized her mother was sleeping later than usual. She went in the bedroom. “I walked up to her and I saw she wasn’t breathing and she was pale, purple and blue. I went to go get my brothers,” she wrote.

Her brothers called 911 and started performing CPR. She and her sister cried, “And it seems like the tears wouldn’t stop.”

Their mother was rushed to the hospital. They spent hours in a hospital waiting room. “Finally a doctor came in and said that there was nothing they could do to save her,” Rousseau wrote. “I couldn’t stop the tremendous pain that was inside my heart.”

She and her siblings went to their mother, who was only breathing on a respirator, to say goodbye. “When it was my turn, I kissed her then I couldn’t hold back the tears. All I could get out was a faint, ‘I love you mommy,’” Rousseau wrote.

Her mother died from health complications that stemmed from an earlier car crash, Rousseau said.

During an interview, Rousseau remembered her mother. “She was a laid-back mom,” who’d dance and sing spontaneously. “She’d be folding laundry and put someone’s underwear on her head and walk around the room,” Rousseau said with a smile.

When she came home with a good report card or “terrific kid” paper, “She was a big ‘put-it-on-the-fridge’ mom,” Rousseau said. Their home was where their friends gathered. “All of my friends called her ‘mom.’ ”

After her mother’s death, her grandmother came to North Carolina so she and her siblings could finish the school year there. Rousseau then moved to Lewiston, entering school as a seventh-grader last fall.

Starting over in a new school, not knowing anyone, was hard, she said. She walked to school alone. In front of the school other students gathered in groups of friends to catch up. “I had to stand outside alone.”

Life improved.

Today, Rousseau smiles easily, has friends and is an honor roll student. On Thursday during an assembly of 100 students, she was called to the stage, handed flowers and applauded for winning the state writing contest.

Her English teacher, Celia Mawhinney, said Rousseau’s writing is powerful. “I couldn’t get through it without crying,” she said. “I haven’t lost my mom. I know I would not handle it as well as she has.”

Rousseau said she thinks of her mother often. Small things, a certain song, something she sees, triggers a memory.

She’s offered a lesson for others. Anyone could wake up and literally their loved ones could not be there. “Never take anybody for granted,” Rousseau said. “Always be grateful for family and what you have. Because you never know.”

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