Heartbeat

• Britany Dentry, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

I remember the day I realized, nothing lasts forever.
Only nine years old, still young and innocent.
I stood in the hospital, white walls, white floors, white beds, the smell of bleach and stale blood. I couldn't move, couldn't talk. I just stood there, frozen in place, staring at what was left of her.
I had just watched her die, right in front of me, in the same room as me.
The sound of the heart monitors constant beep was all I could hear.
It was like watching an old movie, being able to see the people cry, watch them mourn, but not hear anything.
My grandfather came up to and hugged me, but I didn't feel it.
I was the only one not crying, I couldn't cry; I just watched, as if from a distance, like it was all a movie.
My father told me I was being brave, that I didn't have to hold it in, it was ok to cry, but I didn't want to, didn't need to, I hated for people to see me as weak.
My cousins thought I was weird, that I didn't love her like they did.
My uncles and aunties told me I didn't understand, that was why I didn't cry, didn't feel different; but I did, I knew she was gone, I knew I would never see her again, I knew what everyone else was going though. I tried to comfort them, but they just shoved me away.
My own siblings, all five of them, didn't understand what I was going through, didn't understand that I knew what I was going through, I just couldn't express it.
As I watched everyone cry, in that little room. I felt nothing, nothing but one little emotion, that everyone feels, but never cares about.
Hopelessness, like I couldn't do anything to help. No one gives it a second look, it's just a passing thing, but at that moment, it was tearing me up from the inside-out.
I never looked at the world the same way again, everything was a passing phase, something that would one day die.
I have always been told to live life to the fullest, but since that day, I never could, I feared what people would think of me. Would they be able to tell what I carried with me? Would it show in my eyes, in the way that I talked, how I acted? Only one ever saw it, he said, he could see a story in my eyes, a life of loss, of endurance, but most of all, he saw a fighter.
Every-time I see a death, or go to a funeral, I'm the shoulder to cry on, they found me to be someone strong, someone who could comfort them, but without the tears.
I do feel sadness, I do feel loss, I do feel.
You just have to look behind the smile, behind the walls I built all those years ago.
I still remember the day I realized, nothing lasts forever.