Unexpected

Sinking Sorrow

I'm so sorry for your loss.

They always said that.

People always said that and they would have piteous expressions on their faces as they uttered those words. Their voices would be soft and muffled like they had sheep's wool between their teeth. There'd always be tissues clutched in shaking hands and downward cast eyes and light touches meant to sooth the soul.

I remembered people saying that to my mother at my father's funeral. I remember how they'd look at her before looking down at me, tearing up as they looked at the fatherless child with confused, frustrated silent tears running down her face.

I remembered people saying it when I stood at my mother's grave. They'd say it and I ignored it, my fists balled up. They would then go and repeat the phrase to my grandparents. I'd never seen my grandmother cry up until then.

I'm so sorry for your loss.

I knew the voice kept talking after that, trying to communicate with me as my mind and body fell into a void, a nothingness that I was familiar with. The emptiness of loss.

I couldn't feel my toes or the heat of the air on my skin or the beating of my own heart. Was I even breathing? How could one be so numb and not be dead?

"Did they suffer?" Was that my voice? It sounded flat, lifeless, and distant.

"No. It looks like they died immediately upon impact."

They felt no pain.

"Where are they now?"

She responded with the name of the morgue of some hospital that I didn't know. It didn't seem right. They shouldn't be in a morgue. Morgues were for the dead.

Grams. Grumps. They couldn't be dead.

They couldn't be gone. They couldn't leave me. Not like mom and dad had. They couldn't be out of my reach. They couldn't be any more than a phone call away.

I must have dropped my phone, because it was now face down on the linoleum of my kitchen floor. My hand that had been holding it was now trembling against my lips, stifling a long, shaking sob as it racked out of me, tearing a rip from my lungs. Why was my face wet? I must be crying. That would explain why everything was blurry.

My legs crumpled beneath me suddenly, unable to take my weight as another moaning sob burst from my lips, muffled by my hand. The hand that had been gripping the countertop was all that kept me from banging my head on the floor. Instead I slipped down into a pile, one shoulder leaning against my kitchen drawers as my whole body shook with the violence of my sharp, shaking breaths. I could hear them now, watery and quickening as my sorrow set in. I trembled as my hyperventilating cries wracked my frame, tears rolling into my mouth and down my chin to dampen my t-shirt.

It couldn't be true. They couldn't be gone. Grumps had his shooting range to go to tomorrow. Grams was supposed to call me to set up plans for when I arrived at the airport next week so we could see the Phantom of the Opera. That was her Christmas present that Grumps and I had set up for her. It was only one week away. She is so excited.

Was. She was so excited.

Not again. This couldn't be happening again! First dad, then mom, but not them. Not my grandparents. Not yet. They weren't supposed to go this way.

"Penny?"

The knock that accompanied the voice at my door made me jolt, cutting off my wail as I forced another shaking breath into my lungs. Steve.