With memories beating my heart, I sit here with my hands massaging white foam between my little brother’s hair.
My back hurts from bending down and scrubbing Evan’s body clean. So much force was being put into every movement to get rid of every impurity, or maybe every memory. A memory of a beautiful life that was stolen from me. No warnings. No signs. Just “live with it”.
It was a beautiful careless life. A life that I thought was needed for someone like me, of my age. I remember a month ago, at a time like this I was painting my nails with a bright pink shade of nail polish. Making sure the brush doesn’t touch my skin. Then my mother walked in. Looking around my chaotic room she said, “What ever I tell you goes in one ear and comes out the other.” I know now that I should have jumped off my chair and cleaned my cluttered room, but what did I do?  I started painting my ring finger, stroke after stroke, and finger after finger. And what was my mother doing? She was folding, hanging, and organizing.
What I see now are chipped bright pink colored nails, half covered with white foam. No time to fix. No time for one stroke of a brush. No perfection.
Then came time to pick out the outfit for the next day. “Mom!” I screamed from across the house, “I need your help!”  She walked in, filling the room with the comforting scent of bleach, and I said, “I have no idea what to pick”, “Olivia I have to go give your brother a bath”, she replied. “But mommy I can’t…” she looked at me with frustration and hurried to the closet then placed a striped dress with black tights on my bed. “Honey, from now on you will have some responsibilities- starting with choosing your own clothes and cleaning your room. No more excuses.”
From now on there will be no time to even think about what I will be wearing tomorrow. There will be me no more calling for help. There will be no frustrated look, even though I want it more than everything. I will never smell my favorite scent of bleach…
It was around ten o’clock, and I lay in bed getting comfortable when Mommy and Daddy walked in. They came beside me, and of course Mommy got a second blanket to cover me with and said, “They say it’s going to be cold tonight”. “Good night kiddo,” Daddy said as he kissed my cheek. “Sweet dreams, honey,” Mommy said as she kissed my other cheek. As they were about to take the first step out of the room I said, “I love you.”
But tonight I will sleep with the cold nibbling my skin, too lazy to get a blanket. And there will be no “goodnights” or “sweat dreams”, just the darkness kissing me goodnight.
I remember waking up the next morning, walking into the kitchen with two plates on the counter filled with scrambled eggs and hash browns, and seeing two cups filled with hot cocoa and marshmallows. After finishing, Mommy asked if I could help her put the clean dishes in the cabinets, but my ignorance said, “I still have to get ready”. I said that even though I knew she still had to make our lunches, get dressed, and get Evan dressed.
But now I wake up, walk into the kitchen to see two plates with a piece of toast thrown on each plate, toasted with some butter. Eating the tasteless food, not because of the dryness, but because of the lack of love. No care. No love. No them. No us.
I remember the time I had the flu, and my Mommy woke me up in the middle of the night to check on me. My temperature was very high, so Daddy went to the pharmacy and bought medicine at 3:00 a.m. Mommy said, “Don’t worry, you’ll feel better”, as she kissed the top of my head. They both stayed by my side until I fell asleep.
From now on there will be no one willing to wake up to take my temperature. There is no one willing to drive to a pharmacy in the middle of the night. There is no one who cares enough. There is no one to kiss my pain fully away, not just the flu, but also everything.
There was nothing to ease the pain away when I came home to the policeman opening the door, not Daddy. There was Granny sitting on the couch with tears streaming down her wrinkly cheeks. There was no one to give me back life when my heart died hearing the horrible news. After hearing what happened, my brain couldn’t function correctly.
My parents?
Car accident?
Gone?
Dead?
Why?
Devastation. Anger. Sadness. These feelings were fighting in my soul to either kill me or break my heart... I don’t know which is worse.
Now I regret it all. I regret not helping, not caring, and not feeling.
I miss my perfect pink nails, the bleach, the outfits, the eggs, and the hot cocoa. But mostly I miss the “kiddo”s, the “honey”s, and the kisses.
Can I have them back?
Now I am the one giving baths, picking out clothes, making lunches, and trying to give as much love to Evan as possible. Granny does a lot, but it will never be like Mommy and Daddy.