There’s a moment when you first see it and you don’t understand who it is. The room becomes foreign and unknown to you. But this house is yours, and the memories inside the walls are still there, they just seem to have blown away when this stranger walked in your door. Your father tells you to have a seat. And you’re pulled to sit next to the person invading your home.
She’s dead.
And you finally understand just who is sitting next to you. He grabs your hand and lets you shiver at his touch. The rest of the words that fall from your father’s mouth all are in a language that you don’t understand anymore. That one sentence, that one touch and you have lost the ability to communicate with others. The invader stands up and finally turns to go. He reaches the door and spins to face you one last time. The sound of his words breaks through the water building up in your eyes. And when you blink them away, he’s gone. Only his whisper left ringing in your ears.
Class continues. People talk to you. The world moves on its way. The hardest thing about getting left behind isn’t people not understanding what you’re going through. It’s not the fact that YOU were the one left behind. The hardest thing is trying to keep up with time. You try and chase it down, but it always seems to be right in front of you and right out of your grasp. Your fingers just trailing through, making small waves through everyone else’s lives.
You keep on fighting. Your loved ones keep on encouraging you. At least that’s what you think they’re doing. The ability to communicate with them is still lost. It never returned after he left. You watch them try and connect with you, but you can’t figure out how to reach back. Until one day, they stop reaching out. And there’s only one hand left with no one attached to it. He is reaching out to you, closer than before.
Her mother comes to talk to you. She asks you how you are. She keeps him away for a couple days. When she returns to see you again she requests you write her a letter and send it. A goodbye that Heaven will see. It takes you days to pick up a pen. You sit staring at it for days, wondering if you can talk to someone who is gone, rather than someone who is here.
You pick up the pen, and words begin to flow again.
They come tumbling out and you cannot stop them. The story keeps going. Time runs faster. There is nothing you can do to stop the rush of words that come out as you talk to her for one last time. The tears run from your eyes and time brings you back into its fold.
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