Anyone who wants to be a can’t-hack-it pantywaist who wears their mama’s bra, raise your hand.
— Benny Rodriguez, The Sandlot
in a photograph
“Hey, I’m going to go Mom, Rhiannon just woke up. Yea. Love you too. Bye.”
Eyes still shut, alarm blaring, I flipped my phone around in my hand until I felt the lock button slide across my fingertips. Repeatedly, I jabbed at the button with my thumb, and the Russian song for my alarm abruptly ended. My phone read 08:21. Light poured though the window onto my unprepared face, and into my fluttering eyes. I felt someone sit beside me on the couch.
“Honey, I have some bad news. You’re going to need to put your phone down.”
My stomach dropped. I hoisted myself into an upright position, shoving the blanket that lay more rumpled across the side of the couch than my body away from my face. My mother has never been a serious person, but I recognized this face, the steady gaze from her dark eyes, the placement of her folded hands, the soft, low tone of her voice; these were troubled mannerisms. I placed my phone face down beside me. I braced myself.
“Aunt Mis is brain dead in the hospital. They’re taking her off life support today.”
We sat staring at each other, waiting for the other person’s reaction. My eyes flicked across her face, scrutinizing it for any sign that I may have misunderstood her words. In a house with my thirteen year old brother and ten year ADHD cousin, there was never a moment of silence. However, with still expressions on our faces, we sat in still silence, a silence I had never experienced before, a surreal silence that was piercingly loud in my mind, and I couldn’t comprehend it. I asked for her to please repeat.
“What?”
She reiterated.
“Nana just called me and told me. Someone found her lying in the middle of a road bleeding, unconscious, and her arms and legs were broken. She’s in the hospital right now. Everyone is there saying goodbye.”
Another horrible silence slipped between us. My eyes closed. My head lowered, and I held my forehead with both of my clammy palms. I can’t recall any of my actions until later as I sat in solitude with my legs crossed on our half destroyed trampoline outside, facing a dirty brick wall, the morning sun to my back. With harsh, intermittent breaths, sharp falling and rising of my back, and a lump in my throat, a flood of tears finally overflowed from my eyes. I only swallowed air in quick gasps, and only processed thoughts in small, scattered fragments.
Why. No, this is not a question, because questions mattered very little in this situation. Why did this happen? Why were there no witnesses? Why her? Why then? Why that way? Fuck, why anything? In all honesty though, what difference does it make? She was left mangled like roadkill for someone else to find. She’s dead. What does it matter why. No, the term “why” is a not a question. It’s a mere declaration of despair, a glitch in reason, an inch from letting go or giving up. Who cares why.
A good friend, unknowing of my situation texted me, “Life is fucked up sometimes. Bad things happen to good people. It’s fragile. For what it’s worth though, I’m glad I’ve got you in my life and I hope you stay in it for a long long time.” Her affectionate message caught me off guard. I explained the news to her, and she explained her unexpected yet enlightening message. The father of a family that she had been babysitting for lost his life to cancer that day, leaving behind a wife, and three sons, all under the age of eight. From this day, I grew to further understand just how suddenly and drastically life can be altered in a moment, how rudely it can be forever interrupted, the outright uncertainty of what the future holds for anyone at any moment.
An unknown author once articulated, “God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.” I believe this quote implies that all the rationalizations for dying are in equilibrium with the reasons for living, whether it be under God’s control, whether it be fate or destiny, or just a long, coincidental arrangement of events. Nontheless, with creation there is destruction, and with destruction follows creation. Destruction paves a path for something new to grow, like a loving family for an orphan, or a home rebuilt after a war. Though there may appear to be a dead end with Melissa gone, and though it may not be clear to us yet, I believe there is hope for a new path, or a new beginning for the mourning.
In my bedroom hangs a photograph of me as a young child with my Aunt Mis at a pumpkin patch. Crouching down to my height, her arm attempting to contain my squirming body, she smiles the same smile that I recollect from the last time we met, and from anytime before that as well. Like a photograph, the memory stands still; it will always remain the same. To me, she will always be a welcoming embrace, she will always be wearing her smile to parallel her sass, and she will always be Stupid Auntie Mis. Though today has been rough, and tomorrow may be as well, and perhaps the next day, she will always be in our hearts, and I will never forget her like she is in the photograph.
I love you Aunt Mis.
Don’t cry. I gave the world one hell of a time today. Don’t regret a thing, except for the time that I got caught giving in.
-We’rewolf
November 13, 2011 at 6:51pm
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As Far As My Feet Will Carry Me
The room burned orange and red, burned my lungs, burned my eyes as I crawled under restless smoke that, like me, struggled to find its way out of the house’s confinement. In this way, the smoke and I related; writhing and blind, aimless in our endeavors to reach the other side of the walls, the walls that began to crumble; they crumbled down, and caved in. They snapped and crackled like wood in a campfire, charred like coals in a furnace, and collapsed under like a frail child carrying weights around his shoulders. Dragging and catching on the bubbling, peeling laminate flooring, my skin, blistered and black, twitched from the intensity of the heat. It felt wrong to be breathing and suffocating at the same time, like trying to breathe with my head held under water. Above all the noise of the calamity in my mind, two words stood predominant against anything else: get out.
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October 27, 2011 at 12:02am
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Mom: Okay you two, be safe!
Rhiannon: Why are you dropping us off on this side of the road?!
Mom: I have to get to work my lunch break is over!
Rhiannon: You can't take a second to drop us on the other side??
Aeron: Mom it's a four lane street!
Mom: Hold hands!
Rhiannon and Aeron: ?!?!?!
