Be My One Regret

be my 1 regret /then

9 1/2 years ago~

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Words I was starting to hate whisper at me continuously throughout the day. Their meaning less helpful  the more times they're spoken. And every part of me wants to run out of the overcrowded funeral parlor screaming. But I don't. I stay. Dutifully by my dad's side. Shaking hands. Listening and nodding. Until every last person who had come to my mother's funeral was gone. And once the door shuts behind them, I turn to walk away but a firm hand grips my shoulder.

"Where do you think you're going Ophelia?"

I look up at my dad forcing back tears. "I don't know. I just can't stay here any more."

Worry creases his forehead. "Okay. Give me a few more minutes with the director then I'll take you home."

The tears spring on their own as I shake my head. "No. I don't want to go home. She's still there and I can't...I just can't be there."

His own eyes water, but he drives them away with a stiff chin up. "I understand you're upset. I'm upset too. I miss her just as much as you do, if not more. But we need to stick together. We are all we have now. Just you and me."

It was the truth. The painful obvious truth. In a matter of two days, I went from having a doting loving mother to a lifeless corpse stuffed in a casket. My mother was ripped away from me by a day drunk driver who  never saw the red light. And sickly, he lived to tell about it. And I was pissed. It wasn't fair. Life wasn't fair. God wasn't fair. Not even a little. I had the world, and she was taken from me. Too soon. Way too soon. And all I was left with was my dad. A guy who barely saw me. A workaholic. A business- driven man with priorities that didn't include me at the top of his list. And it wasn't right. This whole thing wasn't right. 

I jerk out of his hold slobbering with tears. "I'm not going home and you can't make me."

The funeral director peers over my dad's shoulder at my shout, and my dad's face contorts from sincere grief to disappointed annoyance. "Listen here, young lady.." He steps close to me breathing hotly into my face as he hisses lowly. "I know you're upset. Everyone is upset. But you pitching a fit in front of people is not going to help. Take a deep breath, and we will leave together shortly, understand?"

Spite consumes me as I narrow my watery eyes at him. "Listen here, dad, I don't care about anybody else. I'm 14 years old, and I can take care of myself. I'll be home when I'm ready to come home."

My patented leather shoes  turn stomping me from the room and out the side door. Behind me the door starts to close and as it did I hear my dad seething in a twisted painful tone.

"Damn it, Ophelia, don't do this."