All I can hear is the beating of my own heart in my ears. All I can feel is the rushing of every ounce of my blood going straight to my head, as I stare intently at the ground. I hardly notice my feet moving in front of me, or even the muffled whispers of family members I don’t remember ever meeting all around me. Voices cut into the quietness of my thoughts intermittently, mostly just muffled sobs and way too many “I’m so sorry”’s. I feel my lip quiver a bit with every pair of eyes i accidentally meet while walking, and fight to keep my jaw steady. All I can think about is last night’s phone call and how everything since then has just felt numb.
It all started with a calm dinner in front of the TV as usual; a dog in my lap and huge plate of my mom’s latest idea of “food”. I take another tasteless bite of chicken and right about that time was when my mom’s cell phone rings. She looks down at it like she just saw an old friend she never expected to see again and quickly answered the phone with a rushed “Hello?”. Not even five minutes later I could literally see her heart jump into her throat and her eyes turn as glassy and hurt as broken glass. I quickly choked down another dry piece of chicken on my plate, and before I could even manage a simple “What’s wrong?” I realized what must’ve happened.
I’d heard the hidden whispers before. The quiet oddity of my house we usually never have was of course secrets so this definitely was big. But still I heard enough to wonder, enough to set my mind on edge but not enough to ask questions that would let on that I had been eavesdropping. But still the same word always echoed in my head with a hidden meaning I just couldn’t quite grasp at seven. “Cancer”, what a strange word I thought at the time. Only later would I learn what it would mean to me; and more so my family, in the imminent future.
All I did know is that someone was sick, and not because of something as simple as being told, but there’s always a certain way people talk about people who are really sick or dying. There’s a sound in their voice always fear or sadness and sometimes a mix of both. And lately that was all i heard around my house, and exactly what i heard when my mom picked up the phone. Thinking back on all of these clues i should of picked up on back then and didn’t makes me realize my genuine innocence to death and loss at the time but it wouldn’t have made a difference if i’d known or not at the time, life just has a way of sneaking up on you like that sometimes.
I finally reached my destination at the end of the hallway, took a deep breath and walked into the room that my grandma was supposed to be in. I looked over to the bed expecting to see i don’t even know what. My grandma smiling and telling me it was all going to be alright? Or maybe even her laying there sick and just wanting to see me at least one more time? I don’t know what i expected or even what i wanted to see, but what i did see was an empty neatly made bed with a freshly fluffed pillow and nothing else. Or maybe a better way to say it is nobody else. My grandma was just simply no where to be seen and all i could manage was a choked “where…?”. “She’s gone dear” came from the corner just out of my line of sight, where a nurse was finishing cleaning up. “Oh” i whispered almost to my self. It felt like my legs had been kicked out from under me so i dropped to the floor; defeated.
It felt unfair at the time, like some higher power in the universe was playing a cruel joke on me. It crushed me to not be able to say goodbye but now that I’m looking back i realize that her death was just a cruel fact of life that i had to learn. I now know life is full of comings and goings and sometimes both can be sudden and unexpected, good and bad but it’s just something you have to just learn from and move on from. That’s one of the biggest life changing events i ever experienced and it took me years of thinking about it and wondering what the reason was for her having to die to realize one thing. No matter how painful it was at the time, i learned that not everything is in your control or makes sense no matter how much you want it to. Some things are out of your hands, and the sooner you can accept that, the sooner you can forgive yourself for things that may or may not even be your fault, and move on to make your life the very best it can be.