Most five year old girls wouldn't understand what is meant when someone tells them that a beloved one has died. Most kids would just stand there with an empty look on their face, not knowing what to do. I am the exception, I wish I wasn't. I wish I wouldn't have understood, and I wish I wouldn't remember. Remembering is the worst thing I can think of in my situation, when I remember it feels like I have a blade piercing into my heart. It's just one of those things I want to throw away and lock up forever.

Everything in my life had been normal; at least normal to me, until one night that changed everything. Not only did it change everything, but it took away something extremely important that I can never get back. That long night, that terrible day, if the world would have just skipped over that day, maybe, just maybe, it never would have happened. I was standing at the sliding glass door of our apartment and my dad had gone outside to smoke a cigarette. The disgusting smell of smoke was enough to make me sick, but somehow comforting.

I was gazing though the cold glass door, my hand and nose up against it, feeling as though they were going to freeze. The outside air was drowning in darkness except for the colorful lights and the noisy sirens, making my head throb. I saw the police car pull up to my dad and all I could make out were muffled voices, which concerned me, I had these awful feeling crawling up my throat like a bad dinner. I was so scared and anxious.

Little did I know that it wasn't my dad who was in trouble, and once I found out why they were there, I wish it would have been my dad that was in trouble. What had really happened cut me like a knife, my blood was pulsing like it does on a punctured wound. As my dad opened the door to the apartment my fists were clenched, feeling clammy, so sticky, warm and cold at the same time, like a burning sensation. When my dad opened the door and I saw his red, teary eyes, this burning feeling in my hands was anything but comforting to my terror stricken brain.

"Mom is gone" or "Mom died" or "Mom is in a better place". I can't remember the exact words, but it was some sort of combination of those three terrible phrases. That's when the tears starting falling down my hot cheeks, then came the burning again, but this time in my cheeks. I had no words, not that I was one to talk so much when I was five, but even if I had been a talker no words were able to form. The words trying to escape were too innocent and naive to break free of their shell.

That night the air was so still, too still for me. The world stopped for a moment, I think I stopped breathing for a moment as well. I couldn't imagine what it would be like not having a mother. I couldn't think of what I would do. I felt empty, an I felt I would never be filled again. I was a crying, empty five year old, with innocent and naive words that would never escape.