The Secret Angel

I hate seeing her like this. Her eyes are all red, same for her nose and cheeks. There’s nothing I could’ve done to stop it, I don’t have that much power. But I knew. I knew he’d die, maybe I knew he’d die today. But still that much, I should’ve told her…

I could’ve told her, but that’d leave me stuck in two places, she’d either not believe, which is understandable… or it would’ve eaten at her until today.

But having to put her motherly mask on, for us, for my dad, and for herself, I imagine how hard that is. Right now, I read her favorite memories of when she was younger with him, and how he spent his last years. She forces the thoughts that he’s happy now, in full faith,
he’s in heaven and he’s not suffering. That his death was a promise.

I know it’s hard.

I wish I could explain to her, maybe even tell her the vision I see of her running in a field where he catches her and holds her in his arms when she was still such a tyke. I don’t know what she’d do. I don’t want to make her cry. That’s the last thing I’d ever want.
These thoughts bring me to the fear I’ll have to face some day of her passing.
Tears well up at the rims of my eyes.

She lights a candle for him by our portrait of the Virgin Mary. She’s trying, I can see it in her expression, read it in her body language. I want to wash this away from her, like if I could run my hand through her and replace the pain with hope and faith. I don’t like to see her suffer, she’s suffered her whole life, she doesn’t deserve it now, she doesn’t deserve it at all.

But I know she’ll cry, I know she’ll just fall apart, same as I broke apart at the death of my aunt. I know she’s happy now. I can’t wait till my mom sees that.

All those times she’d speak of him, the little voice in my head, the voice in my gut, they said the same thing. I know he’d pass, my mom knew it as well, I'm guessing she hoped it be longer until.

Big Girls Don’t Cry plays by Fergie on my iTunes, everything I feel directs to what she feels, tears make their ways down my cheeks. Everything she feels hits me with quick instances. I listen to myself sing along, my voice is yearning my mom’s emotions. They’re quickly changing to agony and a damp numb feeling.

She can’t kick the thoughts out, her thoughts cloud my head. I want to walk up to her and hug her to keep her from falling apart; I know it’s what she desperately needs. But also, I know she hates feeling weak, especially in front of us. My dad’s her guardian, he’ll keep her heart safe from breaking, but he can’t stop her from the pain.

I know how.

I’ve been training myself, I know it’s hard to believe, especially understand. But it’s true. I can help my mom, I can help her in a way that family and my dad can’t. If she just let me, and if I’d let myself.

She’s on the phone, right at this moment, as I'm typing this. She’s telling everyone. her heart’s getting stuck in her throat. I can hear it. She regrets not visiting him for the short moment he was well. She feels stupid, remorseful, not even a hello nor goodbye was said.
But I see him, he’s happy, confused, but he’s happy. He’s looking down at my family, he’s watching them tear themselves apart over him, and despite the sense of feeling loved, he doesn’t want them to suffer for him. There’s nothing they could’ve done.

My mind falls back to something I half blanked out at in history, about a girl, she lead the French army back a million years ago, with the voices of God and Angels in her head.

That’s how my story goes, in a way.

```Later tonight

We're praying a rosary in his name, like the heavily religious family we are. I stare blankly out the window. I hear the whispers of her guardians, usually a woman, I don't know who she is, and this time, a man. They smile at her.

Her lip is quivering, and her speech is shifting to quick mumbles, her thoughts are eating her alive. Her body language is crippling, I see her shoulders bending over, my dad notices it as well. He stands by her, I get a nibble of what he feels for her [a.n. I can't read adults very well and I'm unexperienced in love]. I see the care and warmth in his eyes and a little surge of the warmth that he feels for her. I can see the walls build up for her, but they crash down for him. Her body conforms to his, her heart molds to the invisible hands I can see hold up her heart.

I dash up stairs to bring my dad a box of raisins from my secret stash in my room, a spirit stands in my sister's closet, then steps out, the man stares at me. I look at him, his cold dead expression pulls up to a smile. I smile back. Going into my room, another one was by my window, when i walk in, he leaves as well. I dash for the raisins and walk outside, returning the second floor to darkness. I stare into my sister's room, they stand beside each other, the eldest one smiles and waves saying goodbye.

I don't necessarily want to say my house is haunted, because it's not, maybe I'm just haunted, I don't really know. But they come to me....in a way. At my cousins' houses, it's the same story. School, every week, I'm counting more and more...

I wonder whether they communicate to know of me so they'll "visit" me.