It was a cold February, Tuesday night in the year 2010. I had gone to bed about 10:30 that night hoping that I would get some good sleep before I had to wake up the next morning and get ready for school. I had fallen asleep while listening to Gretchen Wilson’s Here For The Party album when I was startled awake from the sound of crying and the fast paced shuffle of feet along with the loud creaks and groans of the old floor boards in our early 1900’s house.

My eyes shot open immediately but I did not sit up in bed. I laid there quiet and still acting as if I was still asleep. I heard continuous and ever annoying sounds of someone coming up the stairs to where all the bedrooms in the house were. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Each step and crack getting closer every second. The next thing I know I see my mom in the darkness and she opens her bedroom door and closed it behind her.

I was so confused why my mom was home right now. She had been working third shift at Kellog’s for the last 4 years and she never got home until after I left for school. I hear this sound coming from downstairs through my fake furnace opening. My furnace opening opened up directly below in the dining room and it sounded like their were other people other than my Mom,Dad, and me in the house. “Something is not right”, I thought to myself, “Something is not right at all.”

I didn’t concern myself very long with the faded talk that was coming from downstairs because after a minute or two of trying to identify the voices, my Mom and Dad slowly opened their bedroom door and sluggishly moved downstairs without closing the door behind them.

My Dad, who was actually my step-dad, but no longer my step-dad, has had problems moving around because he had a Pulminary Embolism, which is a blood clot in your lung(s), before he got married to my mom. So my mom helped him come down the stairs and to his chair in the living room. I hear very hushed tones and more crying coming from downstairs again,when I heard the most audible thing I heard since my mom came home. “ I think you need to go get Autumn, Sarah.” I knew that voice, it was my Aunt Starr. Why was Aunt Starr there?

Not even a minute later my mom had come back up those horribly creaky stairs and started softly shaking me to try and wake me up as I was still faking that I was asleep. I opened my eyes and mom said that I needed to get up and I asked her why.

“Baby, you just need to get up, okay?” I replied back with an okay. So I got up and immediately followed my mom down the stairs to find the living room filled with my family members. Dad was sitting in his chair while my Aunt Starr, Uncle Danny, Uncle Deral, Aunt Sherry and my cousin Missy were somehow all able to squeeze onto our little couch. There was wet streams of tears running down everyone’s faces but mine. I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I looked around the room at everyone and Aunt Starr was the first to that said anything to me.

“Come here, baby girl.” she said to me trying to hold back the tears that would not stop flowing. I came to my aunt who had basically raised me while I had been living with her and my grandparents for eight years and she gave me a kiss and what my family calls a big bear hug.

My dad had never been a big fan of my mom’s and my side of the family but I looked at him and he was crying just as much as the rest of them. I asked everyone in the room what was going on. My brain had been racked for every possibility even if it had been a very unlikely one or even an unhappy thought.

That’s when Aunt Sherry finally told me. “ We’ve lost your mama.” I was shocked,it hit me as if I had run straight into a brick wall. Mama…. one of the most close people in my life…. gone. I knew that Aunt Sherry didn’t mean that Mama had been kidnapped. This is the one thing that I really feared the most was losing my mama. She was in a better place, and I knew that, but that didn’t comfort me anymore than holding my stuffed animal Chocolate Dog did at that time. She was gone, out of my life. I was so scared and in disbelief. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do now. Papa, Aunt Starr, and her had raised me for most of my life. She was the one that I had spent most of my time with at home.

I broke out in tears almost immediately, I just couldn’t believe it. That’s when Aunt Starr told me how she had passed away. Suicide…. I thought why suicide, why couldn’t it have been a car accident. Knowing that it was suicide only made it hurt so much worse. I climbed onto the nearest person’s lap, which was my dad, and clung so tight I left slight nail marks even though I’ve never really had any nails. I cried and cried until there were no more tears left to cry. Once I was done crying and hyperventilating I was able to speak and have my family understand me.

They answered all my questions, I won’t go into the gruesome details of what she did to commit suicide but I remember every single thing. After everyone had calmed down we started talking about good memories like of when I used to cuddle up with her and watch t.v. together and the one time she got up on the trampoline with me but got off because she couldn’t take the pain from her hips. Then everyone left and I, even though calm, sulkily went back up those creaky stairs and climbed into my bed covered by the dark of the night and no light and I cried myself to sleep. All I will say at this point is that because of the damage that Mama had done my mom and dad did not want me to actually see her at the veiwings and I did not go to the funeral. The day of the funeral…. I went to school and spent most of the day in the counslers office crying.

To this day it hurts to think about that dreadful and cold February night that I found out that my Mama had left us. I still know that she is in a better place and I try not to cry cuz as I once read from a good author, “ If you cannot remember me without tears, don’t remember me at all.” But I still love her with all my heart and I know she is watching over me.