Pick Up The Pieces

How We Weathered The Storm

How We Weathered The Storm

I had someone ask me once, "What's the worst thing that's ever happened to you?"

I was 12. It was raining outside, and we were sitting in the library. It was a distant relative from one of our numerous family functions, and I remember thinking it was such an odd question to ask. Of course, because I was 12 I thought I knew everything. So I told her the worst thing I had been through was failing a test for the first time.

Maybe it's because I thought that was the correct answer in this strange test she had set up for me. Who asks a 12-year-old that kind of thing?

This relative was older, and most likely a little senile. An aunt, maybe, or a grandmother. I'll call her Aunt Clara, because this was the relative you see once at a party who you haven't seen for years and yet you're still expected to know them. I remember her face. And her voice. She went off on a tangent on how my generation could never understand the true pain she had endured.

To be honest, I wasn't paying much attention to her. She was ranting about all of her trauma and how we never understood her, and she was so angry. So Aunt Clara decided to start attacking different relatives separately, I guess to prove her point. Made her way around the table, throwing around baseless accusations.

When she got to my mother, I started paying attention. I've watched my mother put people in their place multiple times, and it was amusing, if I'm being honest. Aunt Clara was starting to annoy the shit out of me, so I was ready for whatever my mom was going to throw in her face.

Aunt Clara yelled and yelled about how she never struggled in her life because her parents paid for everything, blah, blah, blah. She said my mother didn't know real pain, or fear.

And after that, my mother got pissed.

That was the day I found out she had cancer.

I think that might have been the day my dad found out, too.

It didn't really change much. Not in the moment, anyway. I knew what cancer was and that it meant that people died, especially with the kind of cancer she had. I grew up on stories of things she had learned while working in hospitals. Mom wasn't exactly a stranger to death, considering she worked in pediatric oncology, so part of me thinks that she expected to die from the start. Maybe I did, too.

I didn't understand what my mother dying would mean for me. I had never lost anyone, not like that, so it seemed like something unrealistic. She would get better. She had to get better. But then she didn't. She got worse, and worse, and one day she was gone.

It still took a second to sink in after that.

It was on repeat, in my head. For days after. Your mother is dead. She's dead! She's gone. She left you behind. Like a mantra, or an annoying alarm clock I didn't know how to turn off. No amount of gym time or movies or outside stimulus would be able to drown it out.

The worst thing was the crying. Just, all the time, tears, because of the dumbest reason or the dumbest thing. I would cry after I got a drink at Starbucks, because she would always bring me one after school, or watching a comedy movie because those were her favorite. I would cry in the shower, or in the fucking locker room. Or walking down the street. It was humiliating, and I had no idea what to do about it.

Trying to stop yourself from crying makes it worse, so eventually I learned to just let it happen. Fighting myself all the time was exhausting. My feelings, my everything. At a certain point, I need to figure out how to accept that.

And I did.

Which is why I'm in the parking lot of University Village, kissing the most beautiful person I've ever met. There's no fear left. There's too many good feelings, the fear's irrelevant. Because I have Cas now, and all I can think is happy happy happy happy happy.