A Selfish Past

I do not understand what my grandmother told me before when she was 58 years old, when she was still alive. She said that her grandfather told her that the earth used to be cold. No smokes. Filled with green and healthy trees. No one has to buy their own oxygen to live. I could never imagine how it feels. And I think he's lying about that because if no one ever use oxygen, they should have died now. I sounds impossible.

My grandmother was 59 years old when she died. Old right? I know. She's one of the elder who lived long in this country. But I miss her. We were always happy even if we're just staying inside our house. When we're together, we never felt the hotness of the temperature or the sudden change of Celsius from 48° to 15° in just an hour. All we have were ourselves.

I peaked at the window of our house, bored. I fixed the small ventilator we always bring to breathe then I stared at the tree not far from us. Does it suppose to turn brown and starting to look dry? The leaves are starting to fall down to the people crying and bowing down to the tree as if their God just died. Almost all of the neighborhood gathered and crying for this tree. Even the three priests holding their Bible while chanting some words are crying and shaking. I could see that their sweats are drooling down because of the heat coming from the burning sun. Some even got paled, but they never tried to drink the water they are pouring to the soil of this tree. What are they crying about? If my grandmother's story was true, why didn't they take care of it when it was very valuable? If there were thousands of trees surrounding intelligent people back then, why didn't they water it everyday? Were they selfish? Are we selfish?

My eyes got kinda bored in that situation and place it at the letters written in the wall of every houses. It says, "LET'S STOP CLIMATE CHANGE", "LET'S BRING BACK EARTH", "TAKE CARE OF THE SURROUNDINGS", ETC.

It's Vandaclism right? Or Vandism? Whatever it was called. That doesn't seem to be illegal anymore. Perhaps maybe because paper couldn't be use again. I've seen it three times in my life and it gets getting more rare as the time pass by. We can only use mobile phones but unfortunately, people can't afford buying it now because the most important thing right now, is oxygen, water and food. And oxgen keeps getting higher and higher in price. Only elite people have the right to buy oxygen without any interruption nor getting sold out. I really wished I was living at the time of my great great grandfather. I will literally plant many trees as possible! I will play in the ground without worrying about using the ventilator anymore.

I sighed one more time before turning back the window. I looked at our little house. It looks dull and uninteresting. There's no TV, couch, table, cabinet and bed. The only thing that was placed here is a blanket for our bed and pile of clothes on the floor. My mom said, they had to sell our belongings so that we could have ventilator. She also said she's going to get it back once they found a job together with my father. I wonder where they are? It's been 5 hours since they're gone. It's almost dark now. I hope they're okay.

Maybe they're buying some foods and gift for my birthday tomorrow. I'm really excited, although it's my first time to celebrate without my grandmother. I don't even know exactly why she died. She doesn't have any disease or anything. She's skinny but she's healthy. The only thing I remember with her was when she was crying together with me and my parents while lying in the bed. They were talking about losing money or anything but I don't understand it well. And then her ventilator got blurry as if the oxygen was starting to lose. There my parents started to cry out loud but they did nothing. My grandmother took our her ventilator and started to gasp for air. I also started crying because I sympathise her. Her eyes started to get red and she grasp the bed sheet tightly. After a few seconds, she stopped fighting and froze, eyes opened. We never heard her voice again and the only thing we could hear was thoe sound of our crying. I don't know but I felt like I was a bad person after that.

I heard the door opened and looked at it. I was happy to see mom and dad! Yay! Their back. I was about to approach them but I slow down when I saw the disappointment in their faces. "Didn't you find job, mom? Dad?" I started and they both looked at me with teary eyes then dad remove his eyes from me immediately as if he feels sorry. "No honey, we didn't. But we found a b-birthday g-gift for you." Mom crackly said and secretly wiped the tears that fell down from her face.

I didn't mind her reaction and I jump of excitement. "Really?! Wow! You're the best!" I hugged them tightly but they didn't respond. "Tomorrow, we'll go to a place where everything's free. We don't need money to survive. And we will have a lot of trees to see." I got excited more about her offer. "That's the best present ever, Mom! What's the place called?" I asked out of curiosity. "Paradise." she simply answered. Never heard of that place before, but I'm more than excited to finally see it.

"Let's go to sleep now." Dad suddenly butt in. "But we haven't eaten yet." I said. "We don't have to, son. There's a lot of food in the place we're going Tomorrow." I nodded and hopped in our bed on the floor.

I'm so excited for tomorrow! I never knew there's a place where there's a lot of trees exists! I wonder who are there. I can't wait to finally be able to remove this venilator for the first time in my life! As I closed my eyes, they positioned their selves on both sides of me while hugging me tightly. They really did miss me, huh? That's sweet.

Before I fell asleep from a deep sleep, I heard they say, "This sin won't allow us to that paradise, but you will, honey. We love you.." before I felt what they did to grandmother.