I ran home from school. I ran so fast I couldn't even feel my feet hit pavement. My heart never beat so fast in my life, I'm surprised I didn't go into cardiac arrest. I had abandoned my friends in the school parking lot because of the call I received from him.
"I've been trying to call mom from work to check on her but she isn't answering. I'm scared she's done something I need you to go home and check on her."
Those words hit my heart like boxing gloves hitting a punching bag and made my hands feel bruised up and down as if I had punched a thousand walls in the past 4 hours.
I couldn't let my mom try to take her own life. Again.
I finally turned onto my street, still running as the 40 degree weather was hitting my cheeks. I saw my tall white house with the oak tree in front. The rope from the swing was gone, the wooden plank laying on the ground looking like a dead animal. I started to panic. That swing was still hung from that tree when I left for school this morning. I opened the door to our sad little house with ease, because it was unlocked.
"Mom?" I yelled. My voice echoed off the thin walls. Silence.
"MOM PLEASE LET ME KNOW YOU'RE OK!" I screamed as I ran up the wooden stairs, every heavy step shaking the fragile house.
No answer from my mom. I make it up to the upstairs hallway. I walked to the end of the hallway where her room was, her door half open. By now, my heart beat was the only thing I could hear. I open the door.
The window was open, a breeze was coming in but couldn't mask my frigid scream which was probably so much colder. I couldn't even hear my own screams, my heartbeat was still overpowering my hearing. I heard more heavy footsteps, which could've been easily mistaken for my own heartbeat. I found myself on the floor against the wall in front of my mothers bed. Brad ran in.
I've never seen my brother cry ever. He's always been the bravest person I've known. Through all the hospital visits, interventions, drives to the rehabilitation center, I've never seen him cry once. But now I watched him break down on his knees, screaming, sending him into a panic attack while vomiting on the floor.
I now know why the rope from the swing was gone even though I figured it out too quickly. It was now hanging from a ceiling fan. Wrapped around my mothers neck.
An ambulance arrived. I had to make the call to the ambulance. My vision had been blurred. Brad and me sat in front of the tall white house on the curb across the street, watching our own mother be brought out by a gurney and put into the back of a ambulance truck.
I looked over to Brad. My brother, who had been so lively his entire life. I've never seen him look so dead. He had bright hazel eyes, which I swear were now grey. Tears had been coming out of eyes which made my vision blurry. The ambulance and police car lights looked like blobs of flashing red and blue.
Would I call grandma? To tell her we would need someplace to stay, since I wouldn't want Brad to drive all the way back to his apartment downtown by himself. I couldn't let him drive home by himself, for the fears of what he might do if he were left alone. A tan cop with a mustache walks up to us. Brad couldn't even look at him.
"Do you kids have any other parent or guardian you could stay with tonight?"
So used to that question. We've stayed with grandma for many nights. From nights my mom would get sent to jail for the night, or when she'd have suicide attempts and have to be put into the hospital for multiple weeks on end. Looks like those days will come to end.
"Yes, my Grandma Windy. I can call her and have us stay at her place."
I call my grandma. She answers and I tell her what happened leaving her in total panic and distress. She cries on the phone as she always does when we come to her with these types of things.
As it gets darker, it gets colder. The dead trees sway as bitter wind flies like crows through their thin branches. The oak tree in our front yard looked dead too. It has nothing to hold onto anymore. My phone is blown up with texts from my friends asking if I was okay. Probably won't reply to those for a few days.
My grandma pulled up in her old saturn. Brad came out of the death-like state he was in and walked straight to the car. He went to the back seat, probably to avoid front seat conversation with grandma. I got into the passengers seat. Her car smells like cigarette smoke.
The car was dead silent. I think we all knew what was going to happen. This wasn't pills that could be pumped from her stomach, or cuts that could've been stitched up. This was no oxygen to the brain, a purple face, suffocation.
"Oh, my baby Betty. I wish I could've helped her out but I chose to kick her to the curb. You never realize how much you love your baby until they're gone."
