Paper Bride ✔️ (Book 4 - DP Series - COMPLETE)

33. To Survive

I just walked through a tornado... and survived.

As everyone knows, tornado's are destructive and devastating. They rip life up by the roots and twist debris around until it's just a jumbled mess of garbage. And yet, I just survived that. Because that's how I always imagined a funeral to be. I imagined stepping up to the casket and having my heart—the very part of me that pumps life through my veins—suddenly ripped out of my chest. I imagined the structured pillars that keep my existence standing firm to suddenly end up as a heap of twisted decay inside my chest. I imagined myself to end up a mess of destruction and devastation.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, I find myself smiling and joking with loved ones as they come to offer their condolences. I find myself genuinely celebrating the life that my mother had lived. I find myself seeing all the good that she did and the powerful influence she had on, not just my life, but on hundreds of lives. I never even realized that she knew so many people, but as friends and strangers share their stories and memories about my mother, I find pride swelling beneath my chest.

She's a legend.

She has touched lives in such a magnificent way that I have no doubt she'll be remembered lifetimes from now. Her quirkiness and courage are admirable. She was never afraid to help someone out. She'd go out of her way to lend a listening ear, or to offer words of wisdom.

I'm sitting in the front row as people make their way to the microphone to share what my mother meant to them, and the only thing I can think about is how extraordinary of a woman my mother was. I always knew she was incredible, but I never realized just how far out her integrity extended. She was real and genuine, and honest.

She didn't have to cry with you for you to understand that she sympathized. You could see it in her eyes. She didn't pity people, but she always had the right words to snap someone out of their gloom, and she did it without being harsh or belittling. That takes practice and skill for most, but I believe those things came naturally to her. She was a people person in every sense of the word. She loved being with people, and she loved helping them find their importance.

Tears slide silently down my cheek as I watch pictures of her flash across the projector screen. Music filled with hope and promise drowns out any possibility of doubt. The world is a dangerous, scary place, but I don't have to ever worry about my mother ever again. I don't have to fear if she's okay or not, because she's now in the safest place known to man.

I'm suddenly hit with a startling realization as I watch the photos switch from my mother's younger days to ones taken just weeks ago. I realize that I'm not afraid of death. I, by no means, want to die—I'm still happy to live my life—but for the first time in my entire existence, I know for a fact that I'm not afraid to take my last breath. I'm not scared about what will happen to me in the afterlife. I'm not afraid to say goodbye and leave this world. Because I now have someone waiting for me on the other side. And this thought gives me comfort.

It's this comfort that gets me through the funeral.

Even as I watch my mother's body being lowered into the ground, I don't cry. I just stand off to the side, my heart aching with the loss. But it's this aching that alerts me to the fact that I survived this horrific moment in time. This pain makes it clear that I'm still here—my heart is beating, my blood is pumping, my brain is clicking.

My mother's passing didn't kill me.

I feel something slide over my shoulder and I glance up and to my right to find Seth beside me, one arm looped around my back as he tugs me into his side. I'm not in the mood for physical contact. I'm not in the mood to be consoled or pitied. I don't want anyone's sympathy. And yet, I don't move because I've decided I'm done.