Pages Of Time

Time is like the constant turning of pages in a book. You go through the thirsty ink-pressed letters and along the way you discover why you are here in the first place. Time never stops, no matter how hard your own world crashes around you, the earth never stops turning. Your hands never stop the motion of opening your mind to another page in the future. It’s hard to explain how sad it is when somebody’s story stops so abruptly.

The hysterical cries of my father bounce of the walls as I pick up the phone. It’s lucky I can still hear the sound of the ringing over his heart being teared so violently. A slow sigh was exchanged for my hello and I knew it was just another stranger trying to clear their conscience. Friends of friends, people who I hadn’t heard from in years, have been dialing our number all night attempting to pay their respects. How unfortunate it is that promises of bringing over baked goods can only lift someone so high.

I put the phone down once the caller was done with telling me how unexpected the whole thing was. I close my eyes in need for an escape but beneath my eyelids plays the movie of my lost mother on repeat. Some could argue that she was already dead, that the life in her soul had already been stamped out. After the car accident that killed my unborn brother, she turned into an empty shell of herself. I used to wish for her to just wake up from the nightmare. However, once I walked through the front door this afternoon, still lethargic from a day of school, I realized that my mother had made our lives centre around this nightmare. Red painted the floorboards and imprinted itself into my head as my least favorite colour.

I try to shake the memory that is latching onto my brain like a tumor from my mind and walk to the doorway of my parents’ bedroom. The anger and frustration for my dad’s obliviousness disappeared as I watch him looking at an old wedding photo. It’s hard to hate someone so broken. When my mum asked for his support he had simply waved aside her issues and thought she’d move forward. Now I knew that this wasn’t his fault, this wasn’t anybody’s fault. I climb up onto the bed and we nurse each other out of the deep hole of despair we were buried into.

Now that I look at the engraved letters of my mother’s tombstone, I finally feel okay. It was dad who conjured the idea of putting my unborn brother’s name alongside hers. We stood side by side as they lay down below us. I place the white soft flowers, petals of sorrow down onto the soil. We then walked hand in hand, turning a page from the past.

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