"Even on the worst days, there is the possibility for joy"
The crowd had gathered and it only seemed fitting for the rain to drop heavily on the hard ground below their feet. The sound of the drops hitting the dark wood of the coffins made the little boy wince, and hold his older sister's hand a little more tightly. Her white hand, her perfectly manicured nails in tones of pearl and white engraved on his memory, much like the color of the dark green grass around them, contrasting with the black holes and the dark clothes the big, tall people around him wore was also something he never would forget, as the years in front of him began to pass. But then, as a little boy of ten, his vision began to cloud, like the car windows on another rainy day like the one they had been given that day, and he bit his lip, as to muffle the cries that came out. His mom wouldn't want him to cry, he thought, that was what everyone said. His mom would have told him to be a big boy and make sure his little sister was alright and to make sure she had someone to hold her hand when she cried, like he held her hand when she crossed the zebra walking or when she watched a scary zombie movie with dad and mom and Alexis.
The poetry of dark days only comes after they are gone, because in the moment, all you can think of is the pit of emptiness in your stomach, and feel the hot tears that stream down your cheek. Nothing feels poetic about it, it isn't a play, it's a bad movie rolling in front of your eyes and you don't even get to cash in when it's over and you don't really get anywhere when you complain about it, that's what Jim thought whenever he revisited the memory of that day. How sometimes he would talk about it like it was something that made him a dark and brooding guy and all the girls would nod and look serious, trying to figure out how it made him feel, or if it was like in his dad's books. Of course it wasn't, but most times he didn't say anything while they started talking about their own bad experiences. He had a presumptuous feeling of superiority when most of them came back empty compared to him, in a twisted way.
His sister, his little, bright and clever sister would say that he's just a dick and he shouldn't use the death of their parents as way to pick of chicks. And of course, as in most things, his sister would be right. Sometimes, Jim felt like that day was just a memory of a life gone, like he had died and been born again after that, a new life in a new place. It was as if with the death of their parents, Jim and his sister had started a new life, that chapter of their existence had simply just ended and the book was closed.
Of course, in a way, it had. The house in the Hamptons had been sealed off, which was fine because Jim had little to no memories of it – his mom didn't fancy going there much, and when his dad did go, it was to write or something, and his mom would go with him, just the two and they would be shipped off to Alexis or one of the remaining grandparents. It was their secret lovenest, sometimes Grams would say, looking fondly at their picture, and with that, ended the conversation about selling the house in the Hamptons. The car, or what had been left of it had been also thrown somewhere, their clothes packed and locked in the storage room of their Manhattan apartment, and that apartment had been closed, the brick walls no longer held the pictures of the Castle family, the bookshelves emptied and the rooms cleaned and stripped of their filling, all in neat boxes, all in the addict or the basement of one or another house of the family, and the children sent to their sister and later on to their grandmother's.
And that was it, the end of that chapter for Jim Castle and his little sister, and their big sister and their grandmother and grandfather, and for everyone in New York. The Castle mom and dad were gone for good, and the universe in which they existed had resolved itself.