A Loss

It was another one of those rainy days my father had hated, the rain coming down from above almost as if it were a weeping mother. I looked up into the sky and felt the little drops of water hit against my skin-- it seemed as though that the heavens knew. They knew what had happened, they knew why everyone was all dressed in black that day. I sighed, the tears beginning to form once more, and hoped and prayed to whatever God was listening that they were safe. That my father and mother were in a warm embrace dressed in white or gold or whatever it is they do up in Heaven. I was wearing my mother’s black sweater, the smell still elegant like she had been, and then their wedding bands around my neck. I wanted to scream or shout or yell or curse God and curse the driver that had taken their lives, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was speechless, overwhelmed with a sense of helplessness. I don’t know what came over me, but I fell into the mud in my nice black dress and curled up into a little ball, crying out in shame. No words were needed, nor were they going to come out of my mouth. My brother walked over to me and picked me up, his eyes also red from crying so much.

My parents were taken three nights before. They were coming home from a New Year’s Eve party that their friend Tilly was having, both sober as can be and both alerted. The cops explained to us that the drunk driver came out of no where and smashed into the car head on, killing them both on impact. It was almost as if he was trying to make it seem okay the way they died, like their lives being taken from them the way they were was brief and didn’t induce suffering. But it did.

It wasn’t their suffering, it was our own. It was my brother’s, my aunts and uncles’, my cousins’, our family friends’, and everyone else’s suffering that it induced. My parents were both active in the community and were both loved by many. My mother was a small flower shop owner and my father was the local police chief. I couldn’t bare to look at the American flag draped over his coffin during the ceremony. I couldn’t handle looking at the very flowers my mother loved and loved growing laying on top of her own coffin, either. It was all so sudden and so random that everyone was in shock, but I’m glad that the bastard who did that to them was locked up for two counts of man slaughter, driving while intoxicated, and breaking all speed limit laws.

I wept against my brother’s chest, my body shaking from the cold and the dry heaves I was letting out. He didn’t know what to do with me, so he just carried me. He carried me like my parents did when they brought me home from the hospital. He carried me like he did the first time he held me, him just six years old and I barely even alive yet. Alan was my older brother, six years older than myself. Being sixteen and twenty-two and having to bury your own parents was not acceptable. It was not okay.

No child should have to bury their parents when they were only in their forties. They were still too young, too happy.

I didn’t want to leave them, so I broke free from my brother’s hold and ran back to their graves, falling down once more but this time gripping at their tombstones. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to leave, it was that I didn’t want to let go. I didn’t want to let the memory I had of them leave me, I didn’t want them to float away like leaves in an Autumn breeze. I dry heaved some more, my cries deep and silent. It was almost as if I ran out of wails and woes, nothing but hard gasps for air coming from my airways. I dug my fingernails into the dirt then, bowing forward as I wrapped my arms around my waist, hugging myself. I tried to think about how this wouldn’t be what they wanted me to do, they wouldn’t want me to weep for them, they would want me to rejoice in their life and remember all the good times. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t act like nothing had happened. I couldn’t bring myself to do that.

Alan came back and held me, pressing his lips to the side of my face as he, too, began to weep once more. He engulfed me in a hug and then we were all four a family again. It was back to normal.

At least for a little while.