I was there

Chapter 1

Chapter 1.

I remember watching as everyone around me was mourning the death of my brother. The death that he, himself, wanted. The death that he knew would change us all. Father was openly crying but still standing tall. Mother was leaning into Father’s shoulder. Nick was trying to hold up his brave face, but was unsuccessful. Robert was screaming, gripping onto Father’s trouser leg, because Mother was crying. Mary was fake sobbing, we all knew it, she hated Mother and Father for moving us out here, but not as much as she hated the rest of us. All the while I was the most heartless of them all. I was just standing there watching.  Jason forbid me from shedding even a single tear. He had said that there were better things to come. I couldn’t help but hope. This was Jason. The enthusiastic, cheerful, most down earth member in our family. But he had his flaws. His biggest was putting the world before himself. Even if it cost him his life.

At the time I was only nine. Jason would have been 18 in three months. Nick was 15, as was Mary… twins, but complete opposites. And Robert was 4. The youngest, most innocent of us all. But no one told him what happened and when he figured it out, he left.

It seems since the day Jason died, everyone became someone new. But that was also the day I met Him. I had noticed when we were leaving the morgue that there more cars than when we walked in. I heard more screaming, crying and sobbing in the display room next to Jason’s. I peeked in when Father decided it was time to leave. I saw this young boy, he was about 2-3 years older than me, and he was pleading and screaming for the person in the coffin to wake up. It broke my heart to see this boy so grief stricken and unknowing to what has happened. I wanted to cheer him up. I walked in and said “you know if he is in here, his soul is most likely not going to come back from heaven…” Everyone in that room turned around looking at me with horrified expressions on their faces and anger in their eyes. All I said was the truth. The boy turned around and asked “is heaven a good place? Do you think Poppa will be happy?” I honestly didn’t know how to answer that question, so all I did was shrug my shoulders and said “I hope so because Jason went there too, and he told me he won’t be coming back…” I don’t think that anybody would have expected to receive a smile like the one this boy gave me, not even after all these years. But he smiled. It was the most honest and happiest smile I had ever seen in my life. It made me want to reach out and touch it, to lock it away so nobody else could steal it or ruin it.

After that small encounter I never thought I would see that boy again. But fate has a way of twisting your leg...