When in your life did you feel the most alone?
My mom ran a red light. One. I do it all the time, every day, and nothing ever happens. It's not fair.
A couple of months before my tenth birthday, my mother died. I don't remember remember that day. I don't remember the time just before she died, and I don't remember the time after she had died. I try so hard to remember it all, but I can't for the love of God remember anything from that fateful day- what I was feeling, thinking, saying. It's like I was asleep for a really long time. The sleep prevented me from feeling and thinking, therefor there are no memories from it all. How hard I may try, there is only darkness and silence from that time. I was fast asleep, having a bad dream and I couldn't wake up.
But then one day, several years later, I woke up. I came to realize the truth, and the truth was a bitch. The truth hurt, and the truth hated me. It must have, because it caused me so much pain and it hurt so much.
My mother was dead, she had been for a long time, and she was never coming back. Call me slow, or even stupid, but death is a hard concept to understand when you're young. I'm not saying that it gets any easier with time, I wouldn't know if it does, but I'm just saying that at the age of nine, death was something I knew nothing about. I had a dog that died when I was five, and a cat that ran away when I was eight, but I didn’t understand they were gone forever. I still waited every day for them to come home. For them to come back to me. I had no idea death meant never returning again. I had no idea that it would hurt so extremly much.
I know a man who lost his wife, Camilla, around the same time I lost my mother. On the day of her death, I met him at the cemetary. He sat down next to me on the bench in complete silence and then finally said, "This week is always hard." I shook my head and said to him, "No. All weeks are hard."
I still don't remember what she looked like. What kind of perfume she wore, or what it felt like to run my hands through her hair. There are pictures, of course, but it's not the same. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps I don't prefer the darkness and silence over reality. At least in my own darkness and silence, I wasn't so very alone.
A couple of months before my tenth birthday, my mother died. I don't remember remember that day. I don't remember the time just before she died, and I don't remember the time after she had died. I try so hard to remember it all, but I can't for the love of God remember anything from that fateful day- what I was feeling, thinking, saying. It's like I was asleep for a really long time. The sleep prevented me from feeling and thinking, therefor there are no memories from it all. How hard I may try, there is only darkness and silence from that time. I was fast asleep, having a bad dream and I couldn't wake up.
But then one day, several years later, I woke up. I came to realize the truth, and the truth was a bitch. The truth hurt, and the truth hated me. It must have, because it caused me so much pain and it hurt so much.
My mother was dead, she had been for a long time, and she was never coming back. Call me slow, or even stupid, but death is a hard concept to understand when you're young. I'm not saying that it gets any easier with time, I wouldn't know if it does, but I'm just saying that at the age of nine, death was something I knew nothing about. I had a dog that died when I was five, and a cat that ran away when I was eight, but I didn’t understand they were gone forever. I still waited every day for them to come home. For them to come back to me. I had no idea death meant never returning again. I had no idea that it would hurt so extremly much.
I know a man who lost his wife, Camilla, around the same time I lost my mother. On the day of her death, I met him at the cemetary. He sat down next to me on the bench in complete silence and then finally said, "This week is always hard." I shook my head and said to him, "No. All weeks are hard."
I still don't remember what she looked like. What kind of perfume she wore, or what it felt like to run my hands through her hair. There are pictures, of course, but it's not the same. I'm starting to wonder if perhaps I don't prefer the darkness and silence over reality. At least in my own darkness and silence, I wasn't so very alone.