Callaghan

45

45

SUNDAY 27TH, OLIVIA

“I’m not going to school this week. My dad said I can stay at home.”

“Yeah. I’ll probably miss this week too. Remember you’ve go to get back into your normal routine soon. How is your dad by the way? Is he coping?”

“He’s far from coping. He would never grow old with my mum; they’d never see each others’ hair turn grey. My mum was the most important person in his life. Now she’s just been…ripped away from him. He lost his wife that he’d been married to for 20 years.”

“You don’t know how sorry I am.”

“I do, I just still can’t get over this. She was only 40 years old – she still had a life ahead of her. How is my dad going to tell her work about this? How is he going to tell all her friends about this? We’re going to have to make tons of phone cells.”

“Well let’s not worry about that now. You can sort it out later.”

“Later always seems to be the best time to do everything.” But at one point, that later you’ve been procrastinating of, will come around.”

Dan grew more moody, which was forgivable. There was a pause before I spoke. “How are you feeling?”

“How am I feeling? That’s an intensely broad question. I feel empty inside like something…someone is missing. I feel broken and so confused. I felt like, once I lost my mum, I lost everything else in my life. This feeling of loss is unbearable. I’m struggling physically and mentally. I don’t believe it’s permanent ; I keep telling myself this is just temporary and she’ll come back but I know, deep down, she won’t. I’m just so unsettled on the facts he’s gone. I’m already a different person; I’m no longer ambitious, sociable not courageous. Our connection has just…gone. It feels like she’s just disappeared. Without looking at pictures, I can’t even remember what she looks like. I just feel so depressed. This feeling isn’t going to ever go away, is it?”

Hopelessness was written all over his face. He was merely surviving. “Honestly, it never just goes. But you learn to deal with it and it eases. I just hope to God you’ll find something that will help you get better. It is hard and, most crucially, it takes time. You’ve got to have patience. It’s only been a day; you can’t expect it to all be okay overnight. That’s just not how this miserable life works.”