Short Stories

Family Tree

Family Tree

She sat alone in a corner, which was devoured by shade and scattered with lonely and broken sticks that had been ripped from their family and home last night in the angry storm that had torn through the valley. The girl who was no older then sixteen, sat stunned, looking like one of the sticks. She knew how it felt to have something taken from you so suddenly, without having the chance to say good bye. She sat quietly with the sticks, still and lifeless, never again going see her once so warm parents. She wondered if they could hear her chanting "I love you," that blasted from a whisper, quickly to a howl. She sat there with the lonely sticks, with no clue as to who would pick her, and the rest of her scattered, now broken family up. She clung desperately to what little she had left.

She was tired, dragged down by emotion's gravity. She had used all her energy being strong in front of her siblings all morning. She had to be the strongest one, the new mama bear. Like the sticks with their limbs, all they had left were each other. The girl finally crumpled because she had finally got her siblings to fall asleep. The girl cried herself to the point of exhaustion, finally falling asleep herself. Time had flown by all day, ever since the police had shown up this morning, having to break the news of the terrible accident to her and her siblings. She felt like it had been days between this morning and her finding this dark dewy corner.

Days went by before her mom's mom, whom she barely knew, flew into town to look after them. She arrived a short week after the accident; along with her came a never ending flood of people and food, that no one wanted. Family she never knew of, and friends of her parents', from work, school and childhood, all came with waves of tears and stabs of pain. Everyone flooded into the house like a constant stream, in and out, leaving, what felt like pieces of grief when they left.

"Oh my you have grown so much!"

"You four look so much like your parents did when they were your age."

"Do you remember us? Your aunty something and uncle something else? The last time we saw you was when you were a turkey."

"I am so sorry for your loss."

These lines kept coming over and over and over again. The girl wondered what they expected to hear.

"Really? I thought I was always this big."

"I didn't think I looked anything like them. It's not like I have their genes or anything."

"I am a rare child who remembers everything from their childhood. I am a mutant."

She did not say any of these horrid, realistic, things out loud. She kept them to herself. What made her feel better was when family friends she had known most pf her life started to stand out in the stream that was thankfully drying up. They were like sky-rises in on farmland. They still stood strong while those who never really cared about them all that much vanished.

"Do you remember that time when we all decided to go to the aquarium? The big group of us all? All fifteen of us?" Her one neighbour, who had become her parents' best friend, who had kids their age, and who had become an extension of the family, asked.

The question caused everyone in the room to laugh as memories flooded back in. Stories were told back and forth. Some the young girl remembered, like night and day, and some she did not. Each unique story gave her little views into her past and into her parents' past, into who they were as people because all she had ever known them as were parents.

She was quick to figure out that those escapes were the best help anyone could have given her. This was the positive to all the negative. She began to understand her parents as people now that they did not have to be mama and papa bear anymore. She could finally understand the branches that allowed her to become the stick she was.