If tears could build a stairway,
And memories a lane,
I'd walk right up to Heaven
And bring you home again.
~Anon
BPOV
Life works in mysterious ways. When everything seems to be going your way, something happens, shakes up your whole world and life as you know it changes forever.
The rain poured down, smashing violently against the window. The water fell against the ground like huge teardrops falling from heaven. Staring out of Charlie's old cruiser I desperately tried to distract myself by watching my surroundings blur past me. Trees upon tree's gathered in large clumps, flying past the car window with small houses following.
Death makes us all children again, my father 20 years my senior is every bit as vulnerable, maybe more so than myself. During the funeral I saw his heart breaking right in front of me, it was the first time I'd seen him so defenceless. His love for my mother was every bit as strong as when they were teenagers. I just stood by watching helplessly, barely acknowledging the constant stream of sorrys and sympathies.
No one was sorry, not really anyway. No one was going to miss her like I will. Soon she'd be forgotten, just another name on a gravestone. Maybe that was the stem of my fear? My spirited, remarkable and eccentric mother will just be another statistic, a faint memory of what once was. However the guilt is more intense than the grief, it is a thick layer of mud crushing me until I choose to fight back, but right now I don't have the strength for a defense.
I glanced back out at Forks, my new home. It was all so foreign, from the dark looming grey sky above, aged wooden cabins and the green shrubbery alien to Phoenix. It made the past 17 years of my life seem like a dream.
Reaching our destination Charlie sighed in relief, at least he could feel some comfort from getting home. I stared up at the small two story house with its white washed paint, casting a shadow over me.
Many summers I came here, but at least then I had the comfort of knowing that I could return to my loving mother in a matter of weeks. But now glaring up at the plain white house I knew that option ripped away from me and I was stuck here until college.
Charlie grabbed my battered suitcase from the trunk and silently walked into the house, avoiding all eye contact. He hadn't looked me in the eye since he'd picked me up at the airport, and I couldn't help but feel dejected.
I felt for my locket through my tee-shirt again and clasped onto it, feeling some solace from it.
I walked through the small front door and my brown, battered suitcase was lying at the bottom of the stairs. Passing on through I saw the small yellow kitchen, it was clean but untouched. Along the mantel piece in the living room were two photographs, one of Charlie and mom and one of me at 5 years old.
The house seemed to be so lonely and it tore me up to think Charlie lived in this state of isolation for so many years.
Pacing through the house I reached the dining room, Charlie was crouched over the tabled his head buried in his hands. I could almost feel the grief wave off him through the air. I stood there watching him, listening to my breathing, the only thing keeping me from breaking down.
In, out, in, out, in...
"I think I'll go to bed now." I finally stuttered out, for once I felt a need to break the tense silence that had settled between us. Charlie looked up at me and in that one second of eye contact I could see that he was suffering nearly as much agony as I was. He cleared his throat nervously and glanced away.
"Okay Bells, night." He said softly before I stumbled up the stairs.
I pushed my bedroom door open and saw nothing had changed from last July. If someone had told me back then that in a year I wouldn't have a mother, I would have never believed them. Renee was a scatterbrain, ditsy sometimes and childlike but she always seemed so invincible. She was a force of nature that could never be removed. If I learned one thing from this whole tragedy it was that life was precious, not something that should be taken for granted.
It's so peculiar; you can resist tears and 'behave' very well in the hardest hours of grief. But then you find yourself back in the real world, somewhere normal... and everything collapses
I fell back onto my bed and surrounded myself in my purple cotton sheets trying to escape just for a moment from this past week's event. Though the longer I lay there the more reality hit me like a ton of bricks, weighing me deeper into depression.
My mother is dead, she's never coming back.
At this thought I gasped for air and the tears welled back into my eyes and slid down my cheek while I sobbed quietly. I could feel the cold metal of the locket pressing against my chest, the only physical item I had left connecting me to my mother.
Slowly the exhaustion of everything started to pull me deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, I was unwilling but I did not fight it this time, I needed to escape the grief, even for a couple of hours. Because I knew it was all I had to look forward to this summer.