Hi, I'm a new user. This is a short story I wrote a while ago. Let me know what you think.
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Mother died today. It had been a long time coming, her death. It was her own fault, people would say, because smokers get lung cancer. She could have stopped smoking ten years ago and saved her life, but she kept putting it off. She was always going to quit tomorrow, over and over again, and I believed her. I was so caught up in the idea of tomorrow, and forgot that she didn’t have many left. Once she was diagnosed with lung cancer she stopped smoking, but it was a little late then.
I dusted my hands off and looked at what I had done. I’d sorted through most of her things. It felt oddly final to put them all away into cardboard boxes, setting them aside.
When people die, reactions can be so different that it amazes me. At the tender age of sixteen, I was a rock. Everyone commented on my ability to remain strong through this destressing time. I felt horrible, not just because my mother was dead, but because I was being so emotionless about it.
I didn't cry as I sat by her in her last moments. Her last words weren’t heartfelt: she wanted me to turn off the television, and then, she died. I went from family member to family member, hugging, consoling: not the other way around. It just hadn’t hit me at that point.
I sat there on her bed, surrounded by boxes of her belongings, and crumbled. So much for being a rock; countless years of erosion took place in two seconds. I buried my face in my hands, and I began to cry. I guess when it does finally hit those strong people, it hits them hard. I allowed myself to fall off of the bed, and I pulled myself into a seated position to wrap my arms around my knees. The tears flowed slowly at first, soon intensifying until I was hiccupping with grief and gasping for breath. In an inexplicable rage, I tore open the box with her clothes, and immersed myself in them, searching for a semblance of her again. They smelled like smoke.
