Living the Lie

Barriers

        I remember those days vaguely. The laughter. The smiles. Happiness in a way I haven't felt in so long: genuine, true, unforced. I think of all the times I spent with the people who caused that happiness. I don't remember when I lost that happiness or even how. All I can remember is that for a while it has been replaced with this unmistakable misery that now consumes me and has for weeks or months or even years; I can't honestly remember. I can't tell you when I turned from the bubbly, giggly, happy little girl I used to be, but I can tell you that if I could have changed it I definitely would. 

        The memories of the better days of the past are all that can even partially comfort me one bad days, but today I don't think anything could. As I sit in this room filled with friends and family who are supposed to be there as support and comfort I can't help but question who they really are. I have been questioning everything that once was all I ever knew. The world suddenly within the matter of moments became one huge, whirling lie. 

        As kids we always figure we will one day have to face the day our parents are laid to rest in the cold, unwelcoming ground. But we never really question how or why; we just decide it's part of the enivitable in the circle of life. That's how I thought too, hell, that's how I still thought up until I received a disturbing phone call requesting my presence at the local hospital. Another thing you never really question as a child is what kind of things cross your parents mind on a daily basis and the future, in terms of life and death, that awaits others close to you such as grandparents, aunts or uncles, cousins, or, like in my case, siblings. But the future of my loved ones lives flashed before my own eyes when I answered that dreadful phone call last Friday night.

*RING RING*

        "Hello," I said as I answered the phone.

        "Hello, this is Sheriff Maccord of the Cincinnati police department. I"m looking for a Miss Zoey Mitchell."

        "Speaking."

        "Ma'am there has been an accident, it appears the victims appear to be your mother and your siblings. Is there anyway you could come to the Clermont Mercy Hospital to identify the bodies?" I heard this unable to wrap my mind around what he had just said and completely speechless.

        "Ma'am?" Not believing what I had heard I hung up the phone. After five minutes of processing what I had just been told however, I trudged to my car and began the 35 minute drive. 

        I truly was not paying attention to the road or the other cars or even the music blaring through the speakers at the back of my 2011 Honda Accord. All that I could think was the relentless "what if's" that raced through my mind. What if it is them? What if I never get to hear little Anslye's adorable laughter when I make those funny faces she loves? What if I never see the concern on Greg's face when I talk to the older guys at school and hear one of his lectures of how I need to "be more careful about who I hang out with?" What if I never get to feel mom's warm embrace on my cool shoulders after yet another argument with Dacotah? What if....? What if...? What if this time I really am alone?

        I remember how my worst fears were brought to reality that night as I walked into the morgue and the faces' of my mother and my big brother and my baby sister were uncovered. I remember feeling my heart race excel and then all but completely stop. I remember feeling as though the world around me turned to mush and crumpled under my feet. I remember for the first time in my life that I truly had no reason left on this earth to continue breathing and living and trying. I remember everything, no matter how hard I try to forget. 

        I thought that would be the worst thing I would have to endure. I thought wrong. The worst endurance in my life was laying my mother and sister and brother in the ground beside the place my father has rested for now three years. Seeing this reminded me of how I promised him to help mom out and help Greg take care of her and Ans who was merely a year and a half old when he lost his fight with cancer. I thought about how he'd be so disappointed in me if he were here. 

        I sat in the back row of chairs in the dreary graveyard which held the memorial and burial services. I couldn't force myself to sit in the family area with all the distant cousins and strangers who were there to say goodbye to family members they had only merely heard about every once and a while at family gatherings and the dreadful Christmas parties. I recognized a friend of my mother when she introduced me to the crowd of red-eyed, puffy-cheeked visitors to speak of my lost family; the pain in my chest growing with each step to the front. As I finally reached my horrid destination I looked at the three caskets that lie before me and I feel the pain turn into a burning sensation and the warm tears begin to flow as I slowly turn around to face the people waiting patiently. I see kids I remember from when I dropped off Anslye at daycare in the mornings and picked her up after school who were crying into their parent's shoulders for their beloved friend. I avoid eye contact as much as possible as my eyes roam to mutual friends of Greg and myself knowing that seeing such sorrow in their eyes would only worsen the blow. I scan the vast crowd of friends and old classmates of my mother. Finally my eyes find the empty seats reserved for my grandmother and uncle. I stand for a moment thinking over what I could possibly say to this sullen crowd, suddenly without warning or my consent my legs begin to run. I continue to run, I run away from the caskets, the dead eyes of the many, I run out of the grasp of the sticky grass as I meet the road and I don't stop. I don't know where I'm going; I just know I have to run.