DESTROYED

Scene Five

I was dressed in a black tuxedo on the way to my mom’s funeral. I just didn’t want to go. My dad let me skip my mom’s wake because he said “She looked pretty bad, I don’t think it’s the best idea for you to go.” He didn’t need to tell me twice. I knew that it would be a bad idea for me to see her like that. If I did saw her like that I probably would have worse nightmares than I already have.

I slipped the piece of paper out of my pocket that I wrote my goodbye letter to my mom on. I wanted to give it to her as my goodbye.

“Dad would it be okay, if I put something on top of mom’s casket before they bury her, so it would stay with her?” I said

“What were you thinking about putting in there?” he responded.

“Something.” I said.

He looked at me, and gave me a puzzled look. He parked the car and we got out, without saying a word. I walked away from everybody sat down near a tree and read what I had written in my letter wondering is this good enough, for a goodbye for a person like my mom.

My dad walked over toward me and said “Come on it’s time to start. Are you feeling okay?”

“Yeah I’m fine, come on let’s go.” I responded

    I walked to the front of the casket and placed the letter I had written on top. I thought is my ever going to be proud of me.

    I sat and listened to my dad “Alexis was such an important part of my life and my son Miles life. She was a role model that every mom looked up to. I just don’t know what I will do with the rest of my life without her. I will always remember the day she broke the news that I was going to be a father, and we were going to start a family, I never pictured anything like this ever happening. Those people who knocked down the twin towers didn’t only take the lives of so many innocent people, they took those of their family members because they will never be the same. So my son and I both died on 9/11 as well. Those people didn’t realize how much harm they caused.”

Tears swelled up in my eyes and I ran back to the tree. I couldn’t get my thoughts together. I think this was the moment that it really hit me that I would never get to see my mom again. It took a while for me to actually process everything. I guess at first it’s just too much to comprehend.

After the funeral was over my dad walked up to me and gave me a hug and had those I’m sorry eyes.

“Let’s go home. You’ve been through a lot today” Dad said.

I got up and followed, not saying a word. He was right, I was dead on the inside, those people didn’t just kill my mom they killed me to.