One step forward

"Grief is like a moving river, it's always changing. I would say in some ways it just gets worse. It's just that the more time that passes, the more you miss someone." - Michelle Williams

“Come on, sweetie, one more step to mommy”, I open my arms for him to crash in them. He balances himself with his little arms, waiving them around one unstable footstep after the other. I see his joyful face and his toothless smile that gives me all the happiness in the world. A few inches before arriving in my arms, my little kid falls, just before me.

My world falls apart.

“Mommy, sing me a song,” he says, his grey eyes duller than ever looking at me. Cuddling him closer to my side, instinctively, I want to stroke his long-lost hair. Gently, the music coming from my mouth and pouring from my soul tickles my heart, the one I sang so often for him before bedtime, that used to not tremble and that did not make my throat clog.

His eyelids start closing, and I do not want him to fall asleep because, maybe, he will not wake up. Maybe he will not wake up anymore. Instead, I keep singing, to forget and to remember, to imagine and recreate.

Loud footsteps are coming, closer and closer, louder and louder. The sound of it weighs on my heart, but I still hold him closer, even when his body isn’t rising and his breath has disappeared from my neck. Suddenly I don’t feel him next to me, and there’s a gap. Between my arms, in my heart and everywhere around me.

I don’t think I hear anything, or even feel anything. Or maybe I feel everything just not him anymore. All I can see is how still he is and how everyone else is too worried. They’re going to wake him up. Then they stop. Looking at the time, they scribble something down and tuck him to bed. I should be the one doing that, and kissing him goodnight but a heavy hand lands on my shoulder and I’m met with the tired face of the doctor.

The weight on my shoulder feels too heavy. It buries me to the ground and stops me from moving forward. I feel the ground swallowing me, gradually, and I feel myself going very numb and tired, like it’s all too much. Like the cold seeping from my heart is freezing my whole body; I feel like I should do something, but I’m scared of being too loud and too brusque. I don’t want to wake my sleeping angel when it’s been so long since he looked so peaceful.

They’re pulling his cables away.

I don’t know how I got into the white, too-white office. I’m being explained something, a procedure. But I tell them I need to wash his lion plush, that fell when he did too. Words blur, and time too and I can’t differentiate anymore what I’m thinking and what I’m hearing. I don’t know where I am and when I all happened.

Somehow, papers land in my hands, booklets and official-looking paper, fragile looking but sturdy. Death certificate. Time: 04:12 pm. “How to deal with the loss of a loved one”. “Funeral homes”.

Thump. Thump. Louder and louder in my ear, beating again after a long moment of being petrified.

I’ve never known such pain. The wail that escapes from me is close to an animal, and the tears escaping are a waterfall. I grip my chest, hoping that it’ll all go away. For once, I wished that I didn’t know and I didn’t remember anything. How do you stop from feeling this way, and from feeling everything so much it starts to overflood?

The doctor's eyes came to mind. Dry and tired. And his little eyes, dull and blank. Gradually, I think, everything will be so much, it won’t be anymore. All that I have felt will have left me. Will someone also ever look at my eyes, and be reminded of the night, devoided of any stars, and wonder why are the clouds obscuring my sight.

I sign the papers, one after the other, the black ink dancing on the paper. Nothing seems to end.

In a few weeks, it would have been his birthday. He would have been a teenager, making plans and crafting his life. But he’s still a kid in my memories, and the words “taken too young” are still engraved on the stone. And his lion plush is now cleaned and waiting for him on his bed.

I sit on the edge of his bed, looking around making sure he cleaned his room. The air changed for a while now, and I’m sure it doesn’t smell like him anymore. Opening my mouth, I struggle, gaping my mouth open as if to breathe in air, when I only want to exhale everything. Nothing comes out. Left and right, I balance to the rhythm and melody of his laugh, which I hear coming closer and closer from the living room to his room.

I close my eyes, and the only things I see are the things I relive. They are golden treasures buried in an old wooden box, uncovered only for me. Dreams often grant me a visit, coming in the form of nightmares or a sweet comfort. Sometimes, I dream that the stars are lingering in the sky and that the days aren’t clouded. I dream that my shoulders are light and that I’m flying away. Yet, my feet are rooted trapping me

Another cross on the calendar. 

(since I couldn't upload my story since I only had 937 words I'm just going to write this and say that I love writing short stories and that my dream is to get my story published somewhere and of course to get a reward for it. My parents and my teachers and school librarian have been encouraging me to try and publish my stories to such cintests and unfortunately i never got accepted but I wish it could happen one day and show them that their faith in me wasn't worthless)