No one said life was easy. Of course it wasn’t otherwise people wouldn’t keep dying of poverty, there would be no gun crime and there would be a lower rate of unemployed. But life is hard. I learnt that a long time ago. I learnt that hoping can destroy you; I learnt that loving can get your heart broken; I learnt that forgiving can be a mistake and I learnt that not giving up can ruin everything. Yet I still hoped, I still loved, I still forgave and I never gave up. That’s probably why I was chained with metal cuffs around my wrists and blood trickling down my cheek. That’s probably why my body was bruised blue and my heart tight with fear. I had done all the things I had learnt never to do and it had brought me to my death. And while I realised I was going to die I also realised I didn’t regret doing those things one bit – because those things brought me to that town. The town that was full of amazing people, hidden secrets and interwoven destinies. That town that changed my life.
Forever.
1. Gone
My mother was dead.
Even as the words kept swimming over me none seemed to sink in. I just sat there, my body as numb as my heart as the sympathetic policeman kept relaying the same story over and over again but my unresponsive mind caught only snippets. Car crash. Accident. So sudden. Nothing could be done. Dead. Dead. Dead. His voice was like a record that kept getting stuck, repeating the lines until they would forever be imprinted into my brain, into my heart.
I sat on the sofa, my unresponsive face did not seem to matter as much to the policeman compared to my brother’s sudden anger fuelled escape through the door and my father’s tense rocking. I just sat there, unable to comprehend the situation. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t have gone. My mother wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye and while I knew it had been no one’s fault on either side I still had the selfish idea that she could have somehow been with me before she went. Before she left forever. It was such a long time. And then, finally, a single tear trickled down my face. A harsh, heartfelt tear that managed to signify my painful loss in one wet track down my cheek.
The policeman finally left and I was grateful for it; to me he was an onlooker to this family’s pain. I tried to breathe but my chest felt tight, my heart strings pulling hard as they threatened to break under the grief my mother’s death had caused. She wasn’t allowed to go. How could she do this? Her presence that had been so constant, that we had taken it for granted, had now been wiped out of our lives, a crack that would begin to show.
Dad rocked to his feet suddenly, his expression one of emotional detachment as the news of his wife’s passing consumed him. I didn’t try to stop him as he made his silent departure, his feet creating loud thuds as they ascended the stairs. I waited until I had heard his bedroom door shut before I stumbled from the sofa and went the only haven that could sooth the sea of pain I felt – my room. I collapsed on my bed, curling into a ball.
Mum. I wanted her to hold me so much; I wanted her protecting arms to encircle me as her soft voice would sing me to sleep. But it didn’t come. Tears poured down my cheeks, whispering of everything I was too scared to say out loud. I was frightened – frightened of a world that was now so dead, so grey, so dark without the light that I realised had been the presence that was my rock and my heart.
My mother was dead.
My hands gripped my covers tight as my pillow became damp with my sobs that I tried to muffle but couldn’t seem to quieten. She was gone. The person, who had held my hand, stroked my hair, kissed my cheek, scared away the monsters under my bed and listened to the pathetic problems I had once found life threatening, was gone. And she wasn’t coming back. My body moved as it was racked with cries and as I wept for my loss I felt my eye lids close and my breathing quieten.
That night was the beginning of many when I would cry myself to sleep.
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