The phone call telling me she died lasted only a minute.
Only 1 minute. 60 seconds. 60,000 milliseconds. It doesn’t seem like all that much when you put it in perspective. There’s 1,440 minutes in a day, 525,949 minutes in a whole year. If one was to say your entire hand was a years worth of minutes, then a single minute is just a speck of dust on the tip of your pinky finger, if that. But all it takes is a minute for one’s entire world to be thrown in disarray.
The night she died that phone calls one minute stretched into a lifetime. It had only been a few sentences, broken by uncontrollable sobs of my friend delivering the news. The words refused to stick in my head. It was like throwing a rubber ball at a wall, it just deflected back at you. There’s been an accident. Sob. She’s gone Gabby. Sob. She’s gone. Sob. I love you. Sob.If you need anything ask. Dissolves into tears. Goodbye.
I had a friend over and for a long time all we could do was hold each other. She cried against me, her tears soaking deep into the shoulder of my cotton t-shirt. I didn’t cry. The only thing I could do was say that it didn’t feel real.
Some would try to say what I was feeling was numb, but it’s much more than that. It wasn’t being deprived the power of feeling, it was the lack of feeling there at all. I remember thinking: I am nothing. I am air.
And more than anything else I wanted to float away. Up above the houses and the trees, farther up than any skyscraper could dream of reaching. I wanted to wave goodbye to the planes as I soared past them. I wanted to reach space and let it destroy me. Let myself suffocate, swell, and burn until there was nothing.
In those infinite minutes where I felt nothing at all her tight embrace was the only thing keeping me tethered to earth.
Her name is Sara.
No that’s not quite right anymore. Her name was Sara. Past tense. Funny how one forgets such simple things as changing the tense after someone’s gone. It’s in these small moments that the force of what happened really hits you. The first time you realize it’s was instead of is, had instead of has, loved instead of loves. It was that moment, nothing more than a simple grammatical error, that sent me to my knees.
I was outside. It was dusk, the sun just disappearing into the trees across from my house. The grass was still wet with the afternoon rain, the dampness and mud soaking my bare knees. Clumps of grass were held tight within my fists as sobs overtook me, stealing all of my breath. A hot molten mess of anguish and rage seared through my veins, making me want to scream until I had no voice.
This is how my parents found me. Once again more than anything else I wanted to float away. Up above the houses and the trees, farther up than any skyscraper could dream of reaching. I wanted to wave goodbye to the planes as I soared past them. I wanted to reach space and let it destroy me. Let myself suffocate, swell, and burn until there was nothing.
In those infinite minutes when I felt all too much, their arms were the only things keeping me tethered to this earth.
I remember sitting at the celebration of life, dressed in shades of purple and black, like a bruise. Which was exactly how it felt, with her gone, and seeing her pictures. Sara was the bruise I carried with me, and only now has it started to fade with the passage of time.
When you lose someone, life becomes a tightrope. There you are, suspended, a thousand feet in the air. Below you, only darkness, a darkness so deep you lose all sense of direction and purpose. Above you, a cloudy sky. In front of you, a future where you can carry on without it aching every moment of the day. But to get there, you have to cross.
One foot in front of the other, inch by inch, you must move forward. You might teeter a bit as you walk, and sometimes you may feel like you’re going to fall into that abyss, because it’s all too much to bear continuing much longer. But you must carry on, let that become your mantra. Carry on. Carry on. Carry on.
Then one day you’ll finally make it, and everything will be okay. You’ll still miss that person, that won’t ever change, but you’ll be able to deal with it. Though their life has ended, you have the opportunity to continue yours, so don’t waste it.
I’ll see you on the other side.
For more information about Sara and her mother's struggle visit:
http://celebratesara.blogspot.com/
SPEAK UP
BREAK THE SILENCE
