It’s funny and kind of strange what stands out to you in the end. You never know what will be your favorite memory until that moment has passed. More often than not the “big” or “important” things in our lives aren’t what we remember most- though we definitely do remember them. Too often it’s the small things that we never even thought twice about when we were doing it, that we remember. For instance, I can remember my sixteenth birthday. It was fun and I’ll always remember it but there’s another memory that’s been pressing on my mind.
My friend, Emily, and I had a strange liking to crime shows. CSI, Law and Order, Criminal Mind and the works were like cocaine to us. Whenever we were together we had this way of always ending up on her dark leather couch trying to see if we could solve the murder before the detectives. There was one particular episode we were watching together where a young girl had been kidnapped by a serial killer and was on the verge of death before the good guys come busting in with guns raised and save the day. “It’s kind of unrealistic” Emily said beside me.
I took my eyes off the screen for a moment to glance at her. She had dark red hair and a face full of scattered freckles. “What is?”
She shrugged, still watching the happy moment of survival for the teenager on the screen. “It’s always a happy ending. I mean, almost no one in real life survives.”
I smiled a little to myself and looked back to the screen. “Yeah but this is a T.V. show. It would get kind of depressing to watch a show where everyone dies all the time. T.V. can be as perfectly unrealistic as it likes and no one will say anything as long as it’s still interesting.”
“Yeah…” Emily shrugged. “But it’s an unrealistic expectation.”
Thinking back to that conversation now I realize it’s what my English teachers would call “foreshadowing.” That small snippet of a conversation has described that biggest event of my life. I’ve had a lot of time to sit back and think about my life recently. There isn’t much to do here but sit and watch and think- where this is.
“It is by suffering than human beings become angels.” Those outstandingly encouraging words were engraved into the edge of a golden bracelet that my mother found on the floor beneath a chair on her wedding day. They were said by some old, dead, white guy like everything famous ever was. It was a point of laughter in our family- the way she found and treasured that bracelet. I always thought it amusing and kind or strange the way she took so much care to keep it clean and safe, and in close reach. Whenever someone would ask her about it she’d give a wide smile and stare down at the shinning charms and with a shrug she’d laugh; “It’s my little treasure,” she’d say before changing the subject. We all learned that she had nothing more to say on the subject so we didn’t ask any more. That was just the type of person my mother was; eccentric and strange but all the same kind and what any other teenager would call over-bearing.
My family was probably as close as you can get to normal- if there is such a thing. My parents got married in their mid-twenties and a few years later my older brother Tyler emerged. It was only a year and half later when I was born on the particularly cold day of March fifth. I was named Alexandria Claire Steward but near instantly I was known to everyone as just Alex. I hardly made the mark of six pounds when I was born. I was tiny and fragile and my father grew into the habit of calling me his tiny little girl.
But this isn’t a story about that. I could go on for days about my life but I won’t because this isn’t a story of how I lived. This is the story of how I died.
