My eyes opened up, the air was cold as always, but my bed felt empty, my room felt empty, my house felt empty. I lifted my head and looked to the left, my sister's blanket lay draped over the bed, the pillows scattered around as usual, but there was something missing. My sister herself. I lifted my blanket up and felt a swift breeze as my feet lowered towards the ground. The wood creaked, as if the house was crying. I looked to the end of my room, what used to be a few feet away now seemed like miles. The door was drifting farther and farther from my mind. I looked around, but everything was in place, nothing was moved, nothing had disappeared, I assumed my mind was playing a trick on me. Confused, I sat on the bed and waited. Waited for a sign, for a noise, for a movement, for a light. But it never came.

After a few seconds I became impatient and had to get up again. So I walked to the door that was a mile away. I looked through the crack and saw a small black figure. But it did not move. It was quiet, almost too quiet. I turned the doorknob, it emitted a horrible creaking sound that spread throughout the house. The figure through the door jerked a movement and stood up. I squeezed my 8 year old self through the door and into the hallway. There I saw my sister, staring at me, a worried look on her face. I sat down next to her and got under the blanket she had. We whispered quietly so as to not wake anybody up, but I hadn't realized that everybody was already up.

“Why are you out here?” I asked after a minute of silence.

“I woke up because there was a noise downstairs and I heard voices. And then I came out and there were lights through the curtain. I don't know what happened but something's going on downstairs,” she replied, a rigid tone in her voice from the shaking of her limbs.

She pointed at the curtain that draped down from the ceiling over the door leading downstairs. It had always been there to keep the heat upstairs in the winter, but now we were using it to spy.

I didn’t know what time it was, but if my sister was up, it was important enough for me to be up, even if I did feel like I was about to die of exhaustion. We heard a voice downstairs and quickly pulled the curtain back a tiny bit for our faces to peek through. I saw the bright lights my sister spoke of. Red and blue flashing against our house. Turning the white opaque walls blue, then red, then blue, and so on. Car doors slammed shut and people walked in with some sort of bed on wheels. I didn’t know what it was being that my vocabulary had a span of about 100 words.

My sister pulled out her journal and showed me the page she had been writing on.

“September 2, 2010. 6:05 in the morning. Something is going on downstairs. There are lights flashing around, and I think it’s an ambulance. I hear voices downstairs and I think Mommy is having trouble. I’m scared. She was going to hospice tomorrow, maybe they came to pick her up early.”

I read it and my body shivered. I made a noise to try and keep myself from screaming. We heard footsteps downstairs and immediately put our heads to the ground and covered ourselves with the blanket. I peeked through the curtain only to see my father looking down at our worried faces filled with fear, tiredness, sadness, and maybe even a hint of bravery. Well, a hint of bravery that would soon disappear.

“I suspected you two would be up. Your older sister woke up and called me down because something was wrong. Mommy threw up, and she isn't waking up so we called the hospital to take her in so that she can get better. Don’t you two worry, it will be okay,” his voice quivered as I saw his silhouette turning red and blue.

Even if he told me it was okay, that wouldn’t stop me from worrying. From fearing that something so difficult like this moment could end up scarring my life forever. Turning me into someone without emotion or love.

We listened to what he had to say and promised to stay upstairs until everything was okay. With that said, he hurried down the stairs and I heard his slippers on the hardwood floor until he reached my other sister's room, where my mother had been sleeping. She was unable to walk up the stairs in her condition, so we all took turns sleeping with her in the downstairs bedroom. Tonight was my eldest sisters turn, and I couldn’t imagine how she was feeling right now, I had to go down and see more for myself.

My other sister and I decided that it would be best if we just went down to see what was happening. Breaking the promise wasn’t that bad, after all, promises are broken all the time. Promises people can’t keep. Promises like taking me to Washington, or promises to go with me to travel the world, or promises that someone will always be there for you to make you laugh and smile. Those are broken everyday, how could this one do any harm to the million broken in the past. Well turns out it was a bad promise to break, and I wish I hadn’t.

As soon as I reached the bottom step and looked around I realized what a mistake I had made. There was commotion all around the house. People in blue suits walking around with masks and strange contraptions. Beeping everywhere. I scurried to the bedroom. She was sitting on the bed next to Mommy, who was lying there. Lifeless, motionless, breathless.

I ran over as I felt my eyes start to burn. A burning like I hadn’t felt before, a burning that made me want to lie down and wake up from whatever nightmare I was living. But this couldn’t be a nightmare, as much as I wanted it to be, I knew it wasn’t. You don’t feel pain in dreams or nightmares, but standing there on the floor, watching people run around me, I felt something in my heart. Like it skipped a beat. And then the beat got faster, and faster and faster, and it didn’t stop. I sat down on the bed and my father walked in.

“What are you doing down here I thought I to-” he started.

But after seeing our faces he couldn’t send us back upstairs. The men and women lifted her off the bed and onto the rolling one, which I found out was called a stretcher. I watched as my mother's fragile body was taken out of the room.

I ran over beside the bed as they slowly rolled it down the hall, and I grabbed my mother's hand. I reached up and whispered, “I love you Mommy, I promise I'll see you soon, just wait for me,”.

My hand got warm and I felt a tiny squeeze. A small squeeze that made me gasp, I could no longer handle the burning of my eyes, I let go. My palm fell from the bed as the men looked down at me with pity. There eyes shining, but inside was emptiness. The tears rolled down my face as I watched her go out the door. I grabbed the hand she had held and put it to my heart. I thought for a moment. I thought about how I had spent my time with her. She had promised to take me to Washington. She had promised to be there for me, to make me smile. She had promised these wonderful things, but I realized that those promises would never be fulfilled. And I broke a promise as well. A promise to never let go. Because I did let go.

And so on that day, not only did I discover the word stretcher, or learn how far my door is from my bed. Not only did I realize what police cars and ambulances are. But I learned true pain, and I discovered that yes, promises are broken all the time, you just need to learn to try and hold on to the people you love as best as you can. Things fall out of your grip all the time. Promises, hands, and all sorts of things. But you can’t ever let go of the heart of someone you love. You need to hold on to those memories, and hold onto their love. And hold on to everything they give you. Because one day you will fulfill that promise, even if it’s not with whoever you wanted to do it with, they will still be in your heart every step of the way. So go ahead, make promises with people, promises you can’t keep. Befriend strangers, do something new. All of those things will eventually waste away to become a part of the past. But don't ever let go to your hope, your love, your heart. That’s what I did on that day, September 2, 2010. I let go, and I never should have. Because I felt my heart grow empty as I watched my mother leave my house, I watched her leave my street, I watched her leave my town, I watched her leave my life, I watched her leave me broken, all because I let go.