Messy, messy

Alexander’s daughter is quite possibly the most adorable little two year old girl I have ever met. When we went to the drive-in we took my car, since it’s a convertible and that way we could watch from the seat backs instead of folding chairs or through the windshield. I sat in between Hope and Alexander, with Macy sitting half on her dad’s lap and half on mine. Macyand Hope was so into the movie that shethey didn’t even notice Alexander and I sneaking kisses all throughout the two hours. She’s such a sweet little girl, and I feel so bad for her that she’s only going to have her dad around for a little while longer. I don’t know what I’d do if I had a child right now. It made me think back to my brother.

I was three years old when he was born and I thought that a baby brother was just the most amazing thing in the world. Hope was five and she was a little less excited because then there were two things to take attention away from her; me and Chance. She spent the next week sulking around the house and drawing really angrily. She’s always been really into art and has been drawing since she can remember; since I can even remember. Anyways, Chance, at first, was the best thing since Barney for me. But as the months went by, I started to dislike him very much. He stole our parents attention away from not only Hope, but me. He was constantly crying and wouldn’t ever stop. Our parents moved me into Hope’s room and he took my room. You know, all the things that can just piss off a little kid to no end.

Eventually, Hope started liking me more than Chance because she and I were getting the same amount of attention; barely any at all.

Once Chance got older, our parents’ attention branched back out to all of us. He still got the most attention, but Hope and I started understanding that he needed the most attention because of how young he was. When he was five and started preschool, all three of us kids were receiving just about the same amount of attention. But then Dad came down sick. Mom would pick us up from school and we’d go straight to the hospital to visit Dad. He wasn’t there all the time, but it was probably four out of seven days in the week that we visited him there. When it first happened, our parents told us what was going on, but Hope was the only one that really understood it. She was ten at the time, and knew what cancer was. Chance and I only knew that Das was sick, like how Macy only knows that Alexander is sick. I didn’t understand it until I was eight, when Chance started getting sick.

My class was in the library one day and I pulled down the big ‘c’ encyclopedia, looking up the word “cancer”. I sat down against one of the book shelves and read everything under that word. I didn’t understand some of the words that were used, but I understood what I needed to understand. Dad was sick and probably wasn’t going to live. And the same thing was happening to Chance.

I hadn’t realized I was crying until my teacher came over to me and asked me what was wrong.

Chance understood what cancer was as soon as the doctor’s found his. They sat him down - with our parents - and explained everything to him. Hope and I had our ears pressed against the door and we heard everything. When the door opened, she and I were nowhere to be found. We’d ran together to the patients’ lounge, which then led out into a garden area. They didn’t find us for another hour, and even then, the both of us were still crying.

Soon after that, Mom found out the she had cancer too, but hers wasn’t as fast-progressing as Dad’s or Chance’s.

Two years later, Dad finally lost his battle with that damned disease. Chance was eight, I was almost eleven, and Hope was thirteen when we got the news. Chance and I still went to the same school, so we got called to the office at the same time. Just with that, I knew something had happened to someone in the family. My best friend knew so too, and on my way out of the classroom, she stood up and gave me a reassuring hug. I could hear everyone whispering and asking questions as I left and the teacher shushing the class.

About a year after Dad died, I was sitting in history class when we heard ambulance sirens outside the school. Everyone was looking out the windows, trying to figure out who it was that the ambulance was called for, but I was the first to notice the boy. It was Chance. The teacher just let me leave without saying anything further. I was the first one to the hospital out of our family, because I was in the ambulance with him, holding his hand the whole time he was coughing blood. I knew he was dying, and I think he did too, but I couldn’t help but wish that it was all just something he was going to get over. I still to this day don’t know what happened at school after I left, but somehow, everything got sorted out. I hadn’t even taken my books with me or back to my locker. I didn’t stop in the office and tell the I was going with him. I didn’t do anything. I just ran to the ambulance as fast as I could. I think what it was, was that there was no procedure for something like that at school. They’d never encountered anything like that before and they didn’t know what to really do.

My sister found out she had the same thing our mom did about two years after Chance passed. She and Mom were getting the same treatments, but for some reason, Hope’s body seemed to react better to them. She kept getting better, while Mom kept getting worse. Within a couple of years, Mom was taking up a semi-permanent residence at the hospital, and Hope and I were frequent guests.

Then I found out that I had the same thing that Chance had, and the only thing that ran through my mind then was him coughing blood in the back of the ambulance while I held his hand.

Five years after Chance passed, so did Mom.

I was in sixth period study hall my junior year of high school and on of the office-helpers came in and handed the teacher a note. She called me over and gave me the pass to the office to leave. I figured it was just a doctor’s appointment that I’d forgotten about, so I went to my locker and grabbed my stuff, taking me sweet old time. I got to the office and came face-to-face with Hope, tears streaming from her eyes. I dropped my books, gasping, chills running up my spine. I knew Mom had gone just by the look on Hope’s face.

Hope and I had lived together ever since. We were our everything. We were our only things. We’d kept our childhood house for the simple fact that we couldn’t bear to sell it. Some people would sell their house because there are too many painful memories. The way we look at it, we can’t sell it because of how many happy memories there are.