There is nothing. Nothing but questions and anguish. Why? Why did this happen to me? How long will it take before I wake up from this haze of dejection? I cannot make it. If it goes on any longer, I don’t know if I will be able to survive. 

Everyone has gone through or will go through this at least once, but how? Why does it hurt so bad? You can only think of how you will react, but you never know until it actually happens. You can always imagine the feeling, but never fully understand how much it hurts until you have experienced it yourself. 

We were just standing there, so vulnerable and ignorant of how horrible our lives would feel in the next moments. I am the second oldest of 6 boys: one is four years old, one seven, one ten, one eleven, me and my older brother who is 17. All of us grouped together in the room with our mother lying asleep on the medical bed. We were praying that she would be okay, but we knew that she would, because people don’t actually die in real life, that’s only in books and movies, or at least that’s what we were thinking. 

Our shaven mother was laying there, unconscious, and we were all so nervously listening to the beeping of the heart monitor. Every beep was a reassurance that she would be okay. My dad’s eyes were full of tears, as if he knew something we didn’t. He just kneeled by her bed and cried. All of my brothers were crying, because if your dad is crying and your mother isn’t there to hold you, to tell you everything will be fine, you will almost never feel so alone. The only time that you could feel any more alone is when your ear starts ringing, and you try to shake it off, but it doesn’t go away, and the beeping stops. Was everyones’ ears ringing? Did everyone hear that?  What was going on? Numbers of doctors suddenly ran into the room and started pushing us out. They grabbed my dad and ripped him away from my dying mother, and he started yelling. Why is my dad yelling? Why does my throat feel like there is a rock in it? Why are my eyes burning and filled with water? 

The rest of that night was a blur, and the day after that, and the day after that, until I almost forgot who I was, or at least I wanted to. I don’t even want my mom back anymore, because she will see how angry and miserable I have become. She wouldn’t love me anymore. My dad doesn’t, so why would she? He locks himself in his room and cries until we can’t hear his weeping. I only know because I have done the same, every night since we were dragged out of our mother’s hospital room. The only thing I want is to be able to press a button that makes it that I have never existed, but I can’t do that. All I can do is think of how I will be able to last another day.