It’s not possible. There is no possible way the universe would let this happen. My heart collapses. It crashes straight through my stomach and slams onto the sidewalk beneath my feet. It is stomped and crushed under the feet of jaded office workers. When my heart leaves my lungs go with Her. I can’t breathe. A river, a hurricane, a monsoon rushes from within me. I drown in my tears. I hear my name shouted but I cant hear it well through the waves. I can’t hear anything. Now I know what it means to drown in sorrow. I drown. My legs crumble and my head bursts as I hit the dark cement. The last thing I see before blackness takes over is a sea of black leather shoes that don’t care for a broken girl laying in their way.
I wake with crusty eyes. My face burns with the dried tears on my cheeks. They leave marks like veins. My cousin is asleep beside me. One of the most important people in my life and she looks just like her. Her… my abuela. My heart. My best friend. My reason. My savior; and now she’s gone. I fall into myself. I need air. Forcing my newborn legs to stand and walk. I rush out of the bed and make it to the hallway in front of the door before my legs decide to drop. My heart hurts. I hurt. The monsoon returns and I cant stop myself from hyperventilating with the cries pouring out of me. I try to hold in my pain but the sorrow seeps out in small little gasps of grief. The pain takes my breath. Steals it. I can do nothing but try to hold my broken pieces together. If I move, I will tear apart.  Heart attack took her and it is taking me too.
“Mel?”
My cousin, Aria, calls from the door. I can’t speak. I only lay more stiffly in response. She walks slowly towards my broken form and even more slowly kneels beside me. Tears stream down her face too.
“I know,” she whispers quietly.
I can’t help myself, I cry, scream, I shake. She holds me when I can’t hold myself. I cry. I cry. I cry. I cry until I can’t and then I sleep. When I wake I cry again. I don’t know how to explain what it feels like too lose someone you love that much. I become numb. It hurt too much.
I don’t know how long it has been. The days mix together now like coffee and sugar. The only way to keep my grief caged is to lock it in a prison of blankets and darkness. Every once in a while Aria walks in to check on me. She says nothing, only looks at the rising and falling of the blanket and leaves. Today she walks in and sits on the bed. After a few minutes ruminating in the melancholy she speaks, “are you okay?” A bright, ugly streak of Abuela’s death shoots through me. The monsoon is back. I stay silent. She waits. It takes me a long time to numb myself enough not to break when I respond. With a quiet almost not there, “no.”
Aria sounds small, exhausted when she says, “I’m sorry.” Her voice cracks. I don’t hear it but I know tears trickle from her eyes. She’s broken too. I breathe. I fill my lungs with the world. My body takes a breath. The tears that come are different. They aren’t black and monstrous they are grey. With as much strength as I can contain which is pea sized I say, “I’m sorry too.”
I breathe. My abuela is important, but I’m important too. I can’t stop breathing just because she isn’t anymore. It’s hard to admit that but I have too. Another breathe. I fill my body with reassurance.
I don’t know how to smile yet but I’m learning not to grimace. Aria and I work. We need money. It’s good. It cauterizes the bleeding. My mornings are coffee; days are blue skies, daffodils, and bruised knees as I tend the gardens of the privileged; evenings are stench and sweat as I bus the bar tables uptown; nights are cigarette smoke and the blue of the sky at midnight. I can do this. Aria’s smile and her tears fuel me. If she is fighting to be here so can I.
We buy an apartment and the gleam in the eye of the guy next door makes me want to have a gleam in my eye too. So I do. I follow that gleam. He makes me hurt less and less every day. And Aria’s smile is less and less fake every day. She made friends at the diner she works at. We both do well. We begin to thrive.
Sometimes, I think I can feel Abuela’s smile in the sun on my skin. It heals. I heal.
Occasionally when an elderly woman needs help with her garden the sting of her death hits me hard and I don’t know what to do with myself. I hide until the heaves recede and the monsoon returns to her place. And then I call him and he helps tend my wounds. I notice that although I crack when her death comes forth I don’t break like I used to.
Over the next month or so Aria’s artistic passion takes over and the apartment transforms into a collage of orange, tulips, nature, and frills. I’m not sure how that all goes together but she somehow makes it look good. She also started night classes at Malcolm X College to study psychology and the history of mankind. I can tell she really likes the professor. Her nights are longer and mine become shorter. She goes out and I can stand to sleep whenever I want. I love my life.
I go out with guy next door often and one day I realize that im okay. The monsoon visits me from her little corner in my heart every so often but when she comes I think of the memories. The good, the bad, the uncomfortable, the embarrassing, the hilarious, the sad, the completely heartbreaking; all of it. And it was good. I loved it all and I loved all of her while it lasted. I love her now but, I guess I don’t need her now. I have other people that need me. So I will hurt when I hurt but I will laugh and smile and rant all the while. I love my life. I love the people in my life. I love Aria. I love my guy. I love me. I just had to learn how to.