What it means to be popular

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   My name is Maddy Hiraeth. It means a homesickness for which you cannot return. Which is ironic really. Because I wish I could return to the happy home I used to live in, the one when both my parents where alive.

   My mother died about two years ago. She was driving to come and pick me up from soccer practice, when it started to rain.
   I was at school and they brought us inside to wait for our family's to pick us up. The rain was coming down in sheets. Big water droplets. There was loud cracks of thunder in the sky. The world would light up for brief seconds before it would retreat back into darkness. It made me nervous, storms always did. And for the first time, I had a right to be scared.
   Two hours passed after my mother had last said she was on her way.  I was the last one left after all the girls had been picked up. That night is still fresh in my mind. I remember calling my father to see if he knew what was happening. He never answered either.  About another hour passed when the coach finally said she would take me home. We where just about to walk outside when a loud crack of thunder made its way through the air. At that same moment my phone began to ring with a unknown number. I usually don't answer those but for some reason that night I did.
   I remember the nurse on the phone telling me something had happened. I remember screaming my mothers name over and over again. I remember the coach running over to me and taking the phone. I remember the feeling of feeling hopeless. I remember looking out the tall window of the high school, and looking out across the vast sky of rain and lightning. I remember thinking to myself 'it's all my fault'. I remember the pained cry's that had racked through my body in waves. I remember falling to the floor in a heap, not believing if it was real or not. I can recall the coach pulling me up my my shoulders and guiding me to her car.
    By the time we got to the car I was soaked and a wreck. Once we where finally in the car, I remember vaguely through all my sobbing, my coach telling me she was bringing me to Alexian Brothers Medical Center. I nodded my head as she pulled out of the dark,empty, parking lot.
     I don't remember much between that and arriving. Although I do remember the coach dropping me off at the entrance and her telling me she was sorry, and that everything would be alright. I had wished that I could believe her. But at that moment I couldn't.
    I turned away from her car and entered the hospital. I went up to the check in desk and ask her where my mother was. I told her my mothers first and last name. I can remember very clearly the look on her face when she looked up my mother in the System. She turned to me with the most pitiful, sour, sad, face I had ever seen to this day. She told me the room number and the way to get there. I remember leaving her desk with my mind racing. It couldn't be true I had told myself. It wasn't real I tried to convince my mind.
    I arrived at the room number 126. I stood awkwardly outside the room, trying to mentally prepare myself for whatever I was about to see. Nothing could have prepared me for what was on the other side of that door.
     I cracked it lightly. I couldn't see much but I didn't have too. I could smell everything before I could see it. It smelled like blood, different medicine smells, and most of all, death. I know what your thinking,'how can you smell death?', but it was the most distinguished smell I have ever smelled in my life. It smelled like someone had died and whoever was in there with them, blamed it on themselves.
     I walked into the room to see my dad on his knees beside my mothers hospital bed. She did not look
like my mother at all. She was covered in blood. She had a medal contraption on her left foot. Both hands where in casts. The right foot was swollen and purple, not to mention shredded than sown back together. Her eye was swollen shut while the other eye was covered in gauze and tape. Her head was wrapped tightly. And there was wrapping around her torso, but blood still leaked through, staining the material.
   I couldn't breath. This couldn't be real. I looked over to my father. His  dark brown hair was uncombed and shaggy. His bright blue eyes where not so bright anymore. More like a dull dark blue. He had dark circles deep underneath his eyes. And his close clung to him with sweat. He probably looked worse than I did.
I remember kneeling on the other side of my lifeless mom, speechless. My dad reached across her body and griped my hand tight. And that's how we sat for what seemed like hours. Quietly mourning the loss of a mother and soulmate. At some point I unlatched both my hands from my parents and walked around the side of the bed to my father. I sat in the ground next to him silently. I remember him turning to me and bringing me into a tight embrace. We hugged each other like the world was ending. And truth be told, OUR world had indeed ended that dark, sad night.
  I remember him getting up and telling me he was going to find a doctor to discuss details. When he left the room and closed the door tightly, I remember my feelings coming up in on big mess. I laid across my mother and hugged her tight. I sobbed and sobbed into her lifeless corpse. She was cold to the touch, not the warm bubbly mom I was used to. I remembered every moment I had spent with her throughout my 14 years of living.
   I remember a very early memory of me asking her for a PB & J. It ended up with a jelly fight. She threw a giant chunk of jelly at my face and I remember screaming with delight. Let's just say after it took us a long time to clean up our mess, and dad was the only one allowed to make sandwiches after that. That thought made me cry harder.
    I can also recall a time when we where discussing boys. It had been a few mouths after starting 7th grade and boys had started to take interest in me. I told my mother that and she had laughed and said that boys are stupid. I only understood what she meant a few weeks later. A boy asked me out and I had said yes. And after that he avoided me in the hallways and didn't text me back. So I eventually 'broke up' with him. And he cried but I didn't understand cause he was the one ignoring me!
   I didn't know how to live without my mother. She was the backbone of our family. How would we function without her consent nagging about doing the laundry, or when she reminded me all the times to go to my soccer practices. Or simply how would I grow up without a mother?
     I remember my father telling me that we should go home and start making funeral arrangements. I didn't like the thought but it was after all our new reality.
   I don't remember anything leading up to the funeral. I just remember locking myself in my room. Not answering texts or calls. People came by to bring us home made meals and say there apologies for our loss. Most times I didn't go downstairs. I would only wander about when my father fell asleep. I would sneak downstairs and clean the house. I would grab some food and just wallow in my sadness. I would than go back upstairs for another restless night.
   I remember the day of the funeral I couldn't decide what to wear. I know I was supposed to wear black but it didn't feel right. My mother wouldn't have wanted people to be sad, she would want them to rejoice about the happy life she had up until the crash. I might still be sad but the best I could do was wear her favorite color. I went into her closet and picked a Maroon colored dress with black flowers around the shoulders. It was her favorite dress among many.
   My father wasn't happy but he understand what I was trying to do. When we got there, there was well over two hundred people gathered. There was Friends, family, neighbors, and just people there to support us. It seemed as if the entire town came by.
   I was overwhelmed. When it came time to the ceremony I was sobbing all over again. Full on screamed cry's. I saw the pity in people eyes but I didn't have time to care. I didn't have time to be embarrassed. I only had time for grieving.
    After that day when the publicity died down I finally was told what had happened. She was driving on a hill and someone was speeding and lost control and plunged head on into my mothers small car. She was alive when the paramedics showed up but during surgery to correct her limbs, she died.
    After all that had happened my father started to get distant. I thought it was just his grieving process. But than one day I was doing dishes and I took notice to all the beer bottles laying around. I asked my father what he was doing. And he told me 'this is how I live now' and slapped me. Clear across the cheek. It stung not just from the blow but also the betrayal. My father was supposed to help me through all of this. He is the adult he should be the one with responsibilities. His wife dead or not, he still has a daughter. But the way he saw it, it was my fault. I was brutally reminded of that every single day. I had run up to my room and grabbed my backpack. I figured I was just going to sleep the night at one of my friends houses. I packed with tears streaming down my stinging face.
   I ran out onto the empty street and realized I couldn't tell anyone about what my father had done to me. If I did he would be removed from my home and I would be put into Foster care. I would not let my life crumble because my father made a bad decision. So that night I slept on a park bench. Thankfully it was summer so I was warm. 
    I went home the next day and completely ignored my father. At some point that day he left and didn't come back for three days. I was furious with him but it didn't matter. In a week I would be going to start high school. 
   That night I snuck into my fathers room, and into my moms closet. She always had emergency cash in her jewelry box. I was going to just take the money but then I decided I need moms jewelry more than my father did.  I took it back to my room and took about five hundred of the two thousand in there. I walked to the nearest store and I got everything I needed to start school. And thus the start of my independence.