The darkness of the hospital room swallows me. Tomorrow is moms’ funeral. She used to tell me that when people die, you have to cry and then learn to live without that person. I never thought I’d have to use those words against her.
I remember that night so clearly. How dark the sky was and how the trees blew a breeze that kissed my cheek every few minutes. I remember when the lightning struck, then that cool night air that took over me, wasn’t so comforting anymore. It took me a while to get the images of that night out of my head, But to look at my mother as she lay here lifeless is enough to traumatize me. Before, that casket closes her away forever.
My dad puts a firm hand on my shoulder and tells me that things happen for a reason and that its going to be hard, but she is going to be watching over me.
As we drive back home, the accident is being broadcasted over the radio. I don’t want to hear the lies and the stories they’re about to tell, to make my mom’s death sound juicy and exciting so I tell my dad to turn it. He turns it to 92.3 and a song is fading away as the next song begins to fade in. In The Air Tonight. I’m beginning to think that this song is giving me bad luck because every time the song plays, something bad happens. My dad turns around and looks at me, and he can tell by the look he is receiving back, that he needs to change the station.
Once the car comes to a stop, I am dropped off at home. Dad gives me the key and tells me that he is going back to work and he will be off in 5 hours. By the time he gets back it is going to be 10:00 pm. As usual. When mom was alive, I used to love going to her house, because her and my dad had shared custody of me. They had been divorced for two years and dad met another woman. Lisa. She is 6 months pregnant with my stepbrother, who she is going to name Caleb. Seems like dad was trying to start another family without me, while mom stayed single and devoted all her time to me, like he should have done.
Life isn’t getting any better for me, I just found out that my grandmother has lung cancer; she’s a smoker as well so I never questioned how my mom picked up the habit. My grandma calls me every day to see how I’m doing and I never lie, I always tell her that life is too much for me to handle , and that I miss my mom. But she always lies and says she understands, but she doesn’t. She never liked her mother, so when my great grandmother died, she didn’t shed a tear.
6:00 I find some printer paper and begin to draw pictures of dark skies and lightning, just to keep myself busy. Soon I began to write my name all over the paper in cursive, and then I go to dads work office upstairs, and shred it.
7:00 Americas Next Top Model comes on and they’re having photo shoots on rooftops and Tyra Banks is telling the girls to smile with their eyes. At age 11 I used to want to be a model but everyone always told me that I wasn’t skinny enough, even though I wasn’t overweight either. But in the modeling business I would have been considered plus sized.
8:00 I got kind of bored and I decided to go up to the attic and sit looking out through the circle window. But as I sat down looking, there was a box next to me that read Karen. As I rummaged through it, I saw pictures of my mom on the beach. A picture at the hospital when she was holding me the day I was born. Another one when she came to my school dressed up as a clown for my class. And one with just her and I sitting on a bench at the park 2 years ago. I miss my mom so much that I can’t stand it. Things happen for a reason but she wasn’t supposed to go, at least not without me.
9:00 I ran downstairs and wrote my dad a letter stating what was about to be done, and I clipped it to the plastic flowers on the coffee table.
9:15
I pull out the drawer with my dad’s tools and don’t find what I need. So I head outside to the garage and searched through his things and then I finally find what it was that I needed to use.
9:30
I make my way around the house to lock all the doors and pull down all the curtains to make sure that no one can witness this.
9:55
I open the closet door and I see the coat rack and the hangers, but more importantly, I see the metal bar that holds the closet rack together.
10:00
I tie the rope around my neck…