The window looked over the forest terrain and the tiny little humps that formed all the way to the more woodsy area of the woodlands surrounding me, not to say trees didn’t still tower over the hefty cabin my family and I resided in. The tone of the relaxing morning was all over the place, with the green, calming woods being my visual stimulation and the “Requiem for a Dream” soundtrack blasting into my eardrums. If you were to name it, something along the lines of a beautiful panic attack would suffice. I turned to my left and looked through another window, this time staring out to the gorgeous body of water that was calm with no signs of life. Perfectly still. I plopped back down on one of the two twin beds in the room that was right next to the not-so-master bedroom, which itself was next to the compact, tight kitchen and surprisingly wide living area that gave you more than enough space to have a comfortable family of four fit in, not to mention the basement that had two more bedrooms that I had no desire to sleep in due to the fact that they looked like rooms you would have seen in “The Shining,” and, to end off the tour, a ping-pong table that was still collecting dust from its many years of retirement, and encapsulating it all, thick, oak wooden walls to really sell that “Up-North” feeling. Not really the type of place you would expect to find all that often in 2023, more like an old 1980s horror movie about stupid teens being hunted by a masked killer in summer. I closed my blurry morning eyes with no intention of going back to sleep, I just wanted to daydream something for a while. The blurry voice that entered my mind wouldn’t let that happen though.

“You….your….hospital….now.”

After opening my eyes with clear annoyance present in them, I unhooked my earbuds from my ears. “Sorry?”

“You need to get up, your grandma just got placed under urgent care and she is at the hospital right now.” My father, John, said solemnly, which was unusual for his gruff, Hells Angel Biker character. His silver beard looked like steel wool and his head looked like a pool cue, a look that didn’t seem like it could feel sorrow.

I sat there, confused. “What do you mean?”

“What do you mean what do I mean? You need to get up now, we are leaving. I think,” he looked down to avoid eye contact and soften his voice as he said, “well I think your grandma is passing away.”

……

He kept his head down and left the room. Just like him to drop a bomb and not feel obligated to talk to me about it.

I just laid there for a couple of minutes. Silence resonated throughout the cabin. I knew that they were all probably packing and that Dad would probably come back to my room soon, but I just continued to lay there for a few more minutes. I then stood up and, with legs that felt like barbells full to the max with the heaviest weights you could find, I opened the door that led out to the patio that circled the house. Calling it a patio was generous, it was more like a floorboard that was connected to another floorboard that wasn’t sanded, with splinters sticking out like nails. In order to traverse it, you would need to tap into your Navy Seal background and treat it like a minefield. One wrong step, pain. I didn’t really care too much right now though. I just walked, step by step by step, and if a tiny wooden shard were to pop up every now and then, I didn’t really notice it.

I looked in through the broken screen window to see my mother, Stacey, packing her fishing gear. She is a tomboy by nature, with a ponytail hanging out the back of a baseball cap, sweatpants, and a shirt ripped up (not by design), with paint smeared all over it. Tears streamed down her face as water poured from a dam, but at least watching the waterfall created by a dam was relaxing. Her eyes, subsequently, were a dark red that, without tears, would resemble pink eye. She was disassembling the fishing rods and stopped only for a moment just to put her hand up to her face and wipe away the next wave of welling tears. This was her holding back her feelings. She was always, or at least always tried, to be a rock and make the situation feel more grounded. She was trying right now, but the news about her mother was the paper that covered that rock. I always try to comfort her in times like this, well, not like this because this has never happened, but times when she can’t be that rock, but I didn’t know what to do right now. I just stood there, looking through the window, and watched her cry. I can’t do this. I can’t be expected to relay some sort of empathy for something that I have never experienced before. I know that probably makes me a tool, but I can’t empathize sincerely. I love her more than anything, I don’t want to offer anything untrue.

When I entered the other door that was connected to the patio, my mom looked up, tears still streaming, but wiped away quickly when she saw it was me.

“Hi honey.”

“Hey Mom. I know we’re in a hurry, so what do you need me to do, whatever you need?”

“Hmm, I don’t really have anything for you, why don’t you go ask your dad outside or your brother downstairs.” She said with a fake smile and beat red eyes that did everything they could to block tears from coming out.

“Alright. Are you okay?”

“Yep.” The lump in her throat was so big now that she was fumbling a one-word sentence.

“Okay, if you need to talk to someone I’m here, I just want you to know that.”

She looked back down and started on her busy work once again. “Thanks.” I left it at that and walked toward my brother who was on the bottom floor in his room packing his stuff. I walked down the frail wooden stairs and turned the corner past the ping pong table. I arrived at the room on the left side of the hall and opened the door with a loud, fast creak.

The room was unsettling. It was empty except for a bed and a nightstand that looked like it was from the 70s, with a round oval for a mirror that was perched loosely on top of it. The bed was also old-looking. There was no clear indicator that made me think that, it just looked old. There was no way I was sleeping in here, but my brother didn’t seem to care all that much. I saw Vince sitting on the bed, staring at the beige wall and chewing his fingernails to the point where some of them actually were a little bloody. He had a ballcap on, just like Mom, and headphones that rested on top of it. He also had long hair like me, but his hair was much thinner. He had several hairs that he called a beard under his chin too, which may make him look burnt out, but the truth is that, like me, he is just kinda lazy. When I swung the door open, his late reaction was that of surprise, looking up at me and standing up quickly, which, with his height, caused him to now be looking down at me. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous about grandma, nervous about how mom was feeling, nervous about how this affected his vacation, all I knew was that his whole body was like a neon sign that flashed the word ‘STRESS’ on it.

“What’s up,” he said, hiding his bloodied thumbs behind his back.

“Nothing, Mom just told me to come to help you pack.”

“Oh, I’m fine, I was just heading back upstairs actually. Not much else down here except for the sheets in the dryer.” He was hurrying out of the room as he was speaking, and, when he got close, the sweat beading down his forehead became much more apparent. 

“Alright, sounds good.” He was now ahead of me and already turning the corner to go back upstairs. 

I could hear Dad’s voice back upstairs, asking Mom if they needed anything else from the kitchen, indicating that he was done, so far, outside. Vince and I ran up the stairs and when I reached the top something hit me being in the same room with all of them.

I gazed at my mother’s tears, my father’s dreary expression, and my brother’s anxious face and wondered, should I be sadder? I’ve lost all of my other grandparents and I didn’t remember or even know them, so I never really had that hard-hitting moment of a family member dying and now that this might be the first time, is this how I am supposed to feel? Is it bad that I feel more angry than anything that we have to leave because this is the only time a year that we get away from the suburbia of Franklin? The answers that I came up with for each of those were I don’t know, I don’t know, and I don’t know.

“I’m going to go get my phone from my room real quick.” My phone was already in my pocket.

I sped to my room and closed the sliding door behind me. I just couldn’t be around all of them at once when they were like that. It’s selfish, I know, but it just makes me feel, well, weird. I sat down on my bed, ran my fingers through my hair and just tried to think because I didn’t like the confusion that I was feeling. I wasn’t stressed or even sad, I just felt confused. Confused about what was going through the heads of the other people in this cabin. Confused about what was actually going on with my grandma. Confused about how I should be feeling. I know the answer to that last one was probably the least important, but it nagged me the most.

I changed my focus from my thoughts to what my eyes were lingering on, the small table in the corner of my room, battered and bruised. It was barely standing on its legs and had many pieces of itself missing. At first, it looked as if it were on the brink of death, ready to collapse at any moment and pass on. But the chair next to it, which was broken before we arrived, was scattered with pieces all over the floor, which was its reason for looking and feeling so different. I didn’t know what the table was feeling, but I knew it lost somebody it had known its entire life. Now it was just coping in the only way it knew how. It would deteriorate along with it, just to see it again in a different life.

I knew I was taking too long to “grab my phone” so I opened the sliding door, stepped into the living room, and helped my family pack up everything else.