Tuesday, June 3rd 2013
“Life is a strange thing. Its short and it’s unfair, and it’s scary, and it’s wondrous, and beautiful and precious, and all of these things rolled up into an allotted number of years. And we all have different ways of looking at it. And some of us look at it as though any day could be our last or we plan for the future or we just try to make the best of whatever.”
I’m really not sure where I am going with this; somehow words are just falling out of my mouth. Yet no one is listening. My father begins to approach the podium, ignoring my presence.
“And when someone dies it hurts, a lot, so we cry which doesn’t help. But one day our tears will dry up for a while and the pain will subside. And then…eventually…it’s our turn.”
And we die, that’s it, the end, it’s just… over.

Monday, May 26th 2013
As I walk down the corridor I spot Carla staring down the hall in my direction with a vacant, hollow look, it’s as if she is the one who belongs in the hospital. She slowly turns her head back to look through the visitor’s window. I stop just thirty feet in front of her by a set of old hospital chairs, far enough away that I cannot see in the room and just watch her watch him. I don’t know how long it is before a nurse walks into his room and Carla finally comes over to sit next to me.
Her voice is dry and empty, “Please please wake up.”
“Carla,” I’m not sure what to say to her. I’m almost glad, for once, that she cannot hear me, “I’m so, so sorry that you have to go through this.”
She drops her head, “Please come back to me.”
Crying. How wonderful. I hate to see people cry, knowing I cannot help them.

Friday, May 30th 2013
This is what hell must be like, because I am sitting in a room looking at caskets for my own brother; with my family who has not once acknowledged me. And you’d think it would be quiet in a funeral home, but Carla is sobbing, almost in unison with Jill, my sister; and Carla’s two children, my own niece and nephew, are out in the lobby, also sobbing, with their babysitter.
Suddenly I just cannot take it anymore, I walk out of the room and no one notices. I walk past Carla’s hysterical children and to door, stopping just before I open it, and then turnaround towards the piercing cries of my niece and nephew who I have met only twice before.
“Do you have children of your own?” I ask the babysitter.
But she ignores my question trying, unsuccessfully to calm the kids.
“I do not have kids,” I say, “I want kids,” I give her a sympathic smile. “But I won’t have kids.” I say, and I leave. What good are kids to me now?

Wednesday, May 28th 2013
“Jill, there’s some sort of news about-
“Dad, what?” The one thing I can always trust my dad with is his honesty, he isn’t one to keep secrets, but he also doesn’t sugar coat things. Whatever he has to say to Jill I have to hear.
“What is it?” She asks, she has grown so much since I last saw her.
“I don’t know what; your mother says we need to go to the hospital now.” My dad says with a hint of irritation in his voice.
Suddenly I don’t want to hear this news- actually I don’t have to hear this news because my dad wouldn’t be giving the news if it were good. No it would be my mother, she would tell us that he woke up, that all was ok, give us every detail of what the doctors said and what he said and how happy she was and she would go on and on and on, because that’s how she is. And she would say ‘everything is going to go back to how it was.’ Because, to her nothing can ever go wrong, the world is just so perfect.
Only, it isn’t.

Thursday, June 4th 2013
Life is strange I think as I sit watching the sunset. Life is many things.
It is short, too short not to spend every minute of every hour with the people you care about.
And it is not fair, it’s very very unfair for one to lose every one they love, and what feels like a piece of themselves.
For 11 minutes I was an only child. I had a mother and a father and this great big world that I was going to have to figure out myself, and of course with some guidance from my parents. But then 11 minutes later my brother managed to take away that fear. The fear of being alone, a fear I was too young to understand. And for a long time he left alone again, and I was scared. Because life is a scary thing.
But it is also so much more. Life can be wonderful, if you just listen. It will tell you were to go and what to do and you may not be able to hear what it is saying sometimes, but you can always feel it. It will tell you when someone else needs help hearing, when to turn around and simply smile because that’s all it may take to get them to start listening. You simply must follow your heart, for its every beat is beautiful, precious life. And it will guide the whole way through.
“Life was just so many things.” I say to my brother as he sits next to me.
“Yes it was.” He says smiling as me.
For a long time we sit in silence just watching the world. Finally the last of the sun sets and the day is over.
That’s it, the end, its just… over.