It's funny how such a tiny, insignificant, dozen times a day action can become a line fo demarcation.
The picking up of a phone. The pressing of an on button.
Before I pressed it as far as I knew my sister Alina was alive. At the moment of pressing, my life splie into two distinct epochs: Beforee the call adn After.
Before the call, I had no use for a word like "Demarcation," one of those fifty cent words I knew only becuase I was an avid reader. Before, I floated through life from one happy moment to the next. Before, I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew who I was, where I fit, and exactly what my future would bring. Before, I thought I knew I had a future.
After, I began to discover that I'd never really known anything at all.
I waited two weeks from the day that I learned my sister had been murdered for someboday to do something anything besides plant her in the ground after a closed casket funeral, cover her with roses, and grieve.
Grieveing wasn't going to bring her back, an din sure wasn't goign to make me feel better about woever'd killed her waling around alive out there somewhere, happy in their sick little psychotic way, while my sister lay icy and white beneath six feet of dirt. Those weeks will remain forever foggy to me. I wept the entire time, vision and memory blurred by tears. My tears were involuntary. My soul was leaking. Alina wasn't just my sister, she was my best friend. Though she'd beed away studying at Trinity College in Dublin for the past eight months, we'd e-mailed incessantly and spoken weekly,
sharing everything, keeping no secrets. Or so I thought. Boy was Iever wrong.
We'd been planning to get an apatment together when she came home. We'd planning to move to the city, where I was finally going to get serious about college, and Alina was going to work on her Ph.D. at the same Atlanta university.
It was no secret that my sister had gotten all the ambitioon in the family. Since graduation high school, I'd been perfectly content bartending at The Brickyard four or five nights a week, living at home, saving most of my money, and taking just enough college courses at teh loval Podunk university(one or two a semester, and classes like How to Use the Internet and Travel Etiquette didn't cut it with my folks) to keep Mom and Dad reasonably hopeful that I might one day graduuate and get a Real Job in the Real World. Still, ambition or no, I'd been planning to really buckle down and make some big changes in my life when Alina returned.
When I'd said good by to her months ago at the airport the thought that I wouldn't see her alive again had never crossed my mind. Alina was as certain as the sun rising and setting. She was charmed. She was twenty four and I was twenty two. We were going to live forever. Thirty was millionlight years wasn't even in the same galaxy. Death? Ha.
Deeath happened to really old people NOT.
After two weeks, my teary fog started to lift a little. I didn't stop hurting. I think I just finally expelled the last drop of moisture from my body that wasn't absolutely necessary to keep me alive. And rage watered my parched soul. I wanted answers. I wanted justice.
I wanted revenge.
I seemed to be the only one.
I'd taken a psych course a few years back that said people dealt with death by working their way through stages of grief. I hadn't gotten to wallow in the numbness fo denial that's supposed to be the first phase. I'd flashed straight from numb to pain in the space of a heartbeat. With Mom and Dad away, I was the one who'd had to identify her body. It hadn't been pretty and there'd been no way to deny Alina was dead.
After two weeks, I was thick into the phase. Depression was supposed to be next. Then, if one was healthy, acceptance. Already I could see the beginning signs of acceptance in those around me as if they'dmoved directly from numbness to defeat.
They taled of "Getting on with life". they said they were " sure thing were in good hands with the police."
I was so not healthy. Nor was I remotely sure about the police in Ireland.
Accept Alina's death?
Never...
The picking up of a phone. The pressing of an on button.
Before I pressed it as far as I knew my sister Alina was alive. At the moment of pressing, my life splie into two distinct epochs: Beforee the call adn After.
Before the call, I had no use for a word like "Demarcation," one of those fifty cent words I knew only becuase I was an avid reader. Before, I floated through life from one happy moment to the next. Before, I thought I knew everything. I thought I knew who I was, where I fit, and exactly what my future would bring. Before, I thought I knew I had a future.
After, I began to discover that I'd never really known anything at all.
I waited two weeks from the day that I learned my sister had been murdered for someboday to do something anything besides plant her in the ground after a closed casket funeral, cover her with roses, and grieve.
Grieveing wasn't going to bring her back, an din sure wasn't goign to make me feel better about woever'd killed her waling around alive out there somewhere, happy in their sick little psychotic way, while my sister lay icy and white beneath six feet of dirt. Those weeks will remain forever foggy to me. I wept the entire time, vision and memory blurred by tears. My tears were involuntary. My soul was leaking. Alina wasn't just my sister, she was my best friend. Though she'd beed away studying at Trinity College in Dublin for the past eight months, we'd e-mailed incessantly and spoken weekly,
sharing everything, keeping no secrets. Or so I thought. Boy was Iever wrong.
We'd been planning to get an apatment together when she came home. We'd planning to move to the city, where I was finally going to get serious about college, and Alina was going to work on her Ph.D. at the same Atlanta university.
It was no secret that my sister had gotten all the ambitioon in the family. Since graduation high school, I'd been perfectly content bartending at The Brickyard four or five nights a week, living at home, saving most of my money, and taking just enough college courses at teh loval Podunk university(one or two a semester, and classes like How to Use the Internet and Travel Etiquette didn't cut it with my folks) to keep Mom and Dad reasonably hopeful that I might one day graduuate and get a Real Job in the Real World. Still, ambition or no, I'd been planning to really buckle down and make some big changes in my life when Alina returned.
When I'd said good by to her months ago at the airport the thought that I wouldn't see her alive again had never crossed my mind. Alina was as certain as the sun rising and setting. She was charmed. She was twenty four and I was twenty two. We were going to live forever. Thirty was millionlight years wasn't even in the same galaxy. Death? Ha.
Deeath happened to really old people NOT.
After two weeks, my teary fog started to lift a little. I didn't stop hurting. I think I just finally expelled the last drop of moisture from my body that wasn't absolutely necessary to keep me alive. And rage watered my parched soul. I wanted answers. I wanted justice.
I wanted revenge.
I seemed to be the only one.
I'd taken a psych course a few years back that said people dealt with death by working their way through stages of grief. I hadn't gotten to wallow in the numbness fo denial that's supposed to be the first phase. I'd flashed straight from numb to pain in the space of a heartbeat. With Mom and Dad away, I was the one who'd had to identify her body. It hadn't been pretty and there'd been no way to deny Alina was dead.
After two weeks, I was thick into the phase. Depression was supposed to be next. Then, if one was healthy, acceptance. Already I could see the beginning signs of acceptance in those around me as if they'dmoved directly from numbness to defeat.
They taled of "Getting on with life". they said they were " sure thing were in good hands with the police."
I was so not healthy. Nor was I remotely sure about the police in Ireland.
Accept Alina's death?
Never...