The Kiss of Life

Prologue ~ The Life Altering Letter

Prologue ~ The Life Altering Letter

Dearest Khloe,

The difference between life and death always was pretty clear to me.  If you were alive you could breath, taste, feel, sense, and many more verbs.  If you were dead, you could do absolutely nothing, technically you couldn’t even DO nothing.  The difference between the living and the dead was plain as day, can you tell the difference between black and white?

      Ever since I went to my grandmother’s funeral I begin to fully grasp just what death was.  In my mind death was just a really long nap time and if for some reason you couldn’t wake up, all you had to do was have a true love’s kiss!  The whole process seemed simple enough for me at least.

      The funeral had an open casket; which was a stupid choice.  Why would you want to see your loved one dead, wouldn’t you rather keep it closed and remember the times when they were alive and well?  Unless those times were bad and you take joy in seeing them dead, now that’s morbid.

      I remember walking up to my ‘sleeping’ grandma with my parents and my baby brother.  My mother was weeping while my dad tried to console her, which thoroughly confused me!  Why in the world was she crying because she was sleeping?  I have seen my mother cry because Aiden wouldn’t go to sleep, but not once had she bawled when someone slept.  Granted my mother has always been a peculiar case, but we’ll get into that later.

      Tearing my gaze from my loony mother I glanced at grandma.  She looked extremely peaceful, what most people would look like in their sleep I assume.  I wanted to wake her up, I was tired of listening to my mother cry and it made me sad that my mother was so upset and distraught.  I reached my stubby little hands out and began to shake her while making commands to wake up.

      My actions only made my mom cry even harder.  Dad gasped and reached out to grab me.  I quickly leaned over the casket and place a kiss on her lips, I may not be her true love but I did truly love her, same difference right?  

      My dad scolded me for my “foolish” actions and forced me to sit down in the front pew.  Throughout the service I watched the casket, ignoring what the priest was saying.  I began to get worried, why wasn’t she waking up?  I did love her, I swear!  I waited and I watched, but not once did she wake up.  Maybe she was just really sleepy, maybe she lost all her eyelid muscles, or maybe I didn’t kiss her long enough!

      I began to get up, but my father grabbed my arm pulling me down.  I began to protest, but he glared at me warningly and I turned back around and kept my mouth shut.  After the priest was done talking people came to our family and offered their condolences. 

      Later that night when my dad put me to bed he questioned my behavior, I was the perfect daughter and my actions were out of the norm.  I did everything I was told to and I was probably the most mature 7 year old you ever did meet.  My grandmother said I was an old soul and that I was wiser beyond my years, which just meant that I was smart for my age.  Nothing really special, so I assumed by old soul she just meant I was getting older.

      Anyways, back to my father, I explained to him that I was just trying to wake her up from her sleep to try and make mommy feel better.  His gaze softened and he looked like he was struggling with himself.  After a few minutes, his confliction gone, he explained to me what it really meant to be dead.  You couldn’t wake the dead with a measly kiss; you couldn’t wake the dead with anything, well at least in this time period.  To most kids the revelation would have been upsetting, maybe even traumatizing.  I was a different story; I actually wasn’t really shocked at all.  It made sense and it just felt right, if that makes any sense.