For All Life Has to Offer

The World Tilted

And the rain fell in sheets all around. On top of it all, mother nature too had tears to shed. The silhouette of a despairing mother stood shakily above the ground where her son's coffin descended below. She had known this moment would be the hardest in her lifetime, standing there in the rain as the reality of her loss became ever more evident with each centimeter the vessel dropped. She'd scavenged through the depths of her soul for the courage to stand on this day and had reminded herself every moment since that morning to be strong. Six feet, the hole in the earth seemed so much greater than that.

Though the muscles in her cheeks dared not quiver from their hardened expression, tears glided over her skin and dropped under the cover of the rain. Grateful as she was that the weather fit the mood of the occasion and even more so grateful that her children could not differentiate her tears from the raindrops that fell. Her daughter held her hand tightly and though she could not decide who was comforting who, she hoped it was her offering condolence to her daughter and not the other way around. The tears fell harder when she though of how her children may remember this day.

The casket, a dark wood toned box with what remained of her eldest inside sank slowly into the earth. With each foot the world around her tilted, rotating ever so slightly in the horrible sensation of no longer peering through the lens of reality but rather those of something surreal, dark and imaginary.

One.

She remembered the night he left, smiling and kissing her softly on the forehead before waving goodbye. Neither of them had known it was their last goodbye. She would've done anything within her power to keep him home that night if only there'd been some kind of a warning.

Two.

The startling knock of a policeman on the cherry red door of their family home just hours after their last goodbye. She recalled how her mind had both gone blank and begun to race in every direction at the same time and she'd needed to sit down. She remembered peering up the stairs and wondering how she was going to tell her children that their brother was dead.

Three.

The night she'd stayed up crying and cleaning and fussing over the appearance of both herself and her home. Telling herself that there had been a mistake and he'd be home by morning. But morning came and went and though she kept cleaning, she knew he wasn't coming home.

Four.

The dreams that followed her into each night of sleep. Horrible images of what remained of her boy after the crash. Of course, they had only let her see his face and the scar on his left index knuckle to identify that the victim was in fact hers but the dreams were far more detailed.

Five.

The sound of her children confused and sorrowful voices, her youngest not understanding what death meant and believing death was simply a place and her brother would be home soon. Her second eldest falling silent, head down and she watched as his heart broke.

Six.

The reality of it all and the glasses shifting involuntarily between grief and all things she felt and the surreal feeling of disbelief. her world tilted and she too with it.