Strawberry Sweet

•Prologue•

Some people have experienced it, some haven't.

It's as simple as that.

Little did I know that on a Sunday afternoon after having a perfect day out with my mom, that things would take a tragic twist for the worst.

I think it's something we all have to deal with sooner or later. Death is inevitable. Rather it is someone close to you or you yourself.

I once read a quote that said "The changes wrought by death are in themselves so sharp and final, and so terrible and melancholy in their consequences, that the thing stands alone in man's experience, and has no parallel upon earth. It outdoes all other ascendents because it is the last of them. Death does not take them away utterly but leaves behind a mocking, tragical, and soon intolerable residue which must be hurriedly concealed." And I couldn't agree with it more.

I never really understood fully what it meant until that moment. The moment the doctor came out of the E.R. And into the waiting room to tell me, that my mother had passed away.

Of course, I never blamed the doctor. It was his job to save my mother, sure. But like I said, death is inevitable. I never believed in the whole 'When it's your time' stuff. However, I do believe that if you are too far gone, then there is just that point of no return.

I suppose that point of no return was when the mangled car door slammed into her ribcage, or when the piece of broken rib punctured her lung.

I suppose that in the three hours it took the medics and police to find us she had already lost too much blood.

I suppose I knew it was too late when the doctor first stepped out of those white double doors into the waiting room with a smile filled to the brim with pity.

I suppose a lot of things.

The one thing I don't suppose and know to be an undeniable, nonnegotiable, heart-wrenching fact, is that my mother is gone.

"Almost there kids, You guys are going to love it here" my father announces to my brother and me from the rearview mirror. I look over to my brother who has music blaring in his earphones. His white hair messily lays over his forehead. He looks out the window with such a hopeless look that it reminds me that I most likely won't love anything for a while...

Waterridge, here I come... I suppose.