~December 5, 2009

That night, after stumbling back to the mountaintop from a hard night of nearly crying to death, I needed to try my best to get to sleep. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do ever. I mean, I was faced with the reality that my parents are dead and I was still expected to go to sleep! Wouldn't you have a hard time with that too? Especially since I was told all this at roughly quarter-to 10pm. But that night I had a dream about them. It wasn't so much a dream as it were a nightmare though. Nonetheless I remembered it as if I just dreamed it last night…

I was standing in the most beautiful wheat field anyone could ever see! I doubt it was a wheat field you could find on earth! Maybe Heaven, but not here! It was evening so there was a nice sunset that turned everything a warm orange colour. The sky had literal flying colours that couldn't be described. It was the most beautiful place I had ever seen! By the way, that's as poetic as I can get. I'm only poetic like that when I describe this dream.

Anyway, I looked out and saw a bright light along with more bands of colour stream out. Inside it were 2 figures that were slowly fading in and walking toward me hand-in-hand. Upon closer inspection, I knew exactly who it was.

"Mom? Dad?"

They became clear as day and stopped right in their tracks after I spoke up. They stood there about 25 feet away from me and smiled. They let go of each others hands and my Dad walked up a little closer and held out his arms like he wanted me to hug him. My Mother followed close behind afterward. I started to cry so hard…it all felt so real. I charged after my parents at full speed. "Mom…! Dad…!"

Then the worst possible thing I could have imagine happened. As I was running they started to fade away quickly. Alarmed, I tried sprinting faster, but it seemed like I wasn't going fast at all. By the time I got nearly 5 feet away from them, they were almost completely faded away. "No! Please don't leave me! Come back!" I cried as loud as I could. There was a faint echo between my calls for them to stay. The tears were falling from my eyes so fast now. I'd never cried this much ever. Well, except when I found out about my parents.

By the time I got to where they were once standing, they were completely gone. I looked around, but I was alone. "MOM! DAD! NO! PLEASE COME BACK! DON'T LEAVE ME, PLEASE!" No amount of calling to them would make them come back. I was totally hit with the reality that I was on my own. "No…no…NO!" I screamed as loud as I could until I found myself fading out of the dream and slipping back into reality.

I jerked right up in my tent, breathing heavily and sweating more than ever. I looked down into my lap and then over to the metal picture frame that held our family portrait. I stared at it for a good few minutes while sobbing lightly. I held the picture close to me and squeezed my eyes shut while I sobbed. I then crawled out of my tent and looked at all the furniture we had around. I thought about how my Dad made almost all of it…how my Mom used every piece of it…every single piece of furniture reminded me of them. It was too painful to look at. It had to go.

I took everything out of my tent as quickly as possible. Every single present of mine my parents gave me since I was a baby I absolutely had to keep, so I put it all in a pile next to me. Next thing I did was pull everything into the center of the mountaintop. Couches, bookshelves, the tents, tables, chairs, everything except for my Dad's trunk went in the middle. I wanted to keep the trunk because it had some extremely useful things in there. After everything was piled in a heaping mess, I opened the trunk and took out a little bottle of gas my Dad had to start fires on our campfire. He used to only use a little bit to get it going, but not too much. Then I rummaged through it to find the matches. I doused the pile of stuff in the gas, lit a match, took a few steps back to throw the match in and watched it all ignite.

There was a bit of an explosion that I'm sure woke everyone up, but I was so upset I didn't even give a shit. I stood there and watched it burn and burn and burn. Tears streamed down my face as I watched the memoirs of my parents slowly turn to ash. In a way I didn't want to do this. Not at all. But I knew they would constantly remind me of my parents and upset me. I just couldn't do it.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Roxie screamed as she reached the top of the mountain. "Rusty! What the hell happened?" I heard the rest of 'em run up the mountain, but none of 'em said a word. They just watched.

Roxie ran right in front of me and grabbed my shoulders. "Are you ok?" She touched my cheek. "I'm sorry, Rusty. I…I wish I knew. I'm sorry." I fell into yet another fit of tears as my head fell onto her shoulder. Roxie was always such a good friend. I knew how sorry she felt. I knew how bad she wanted to help me, but she just didn't know how. "I'm sorry. We'll get through this together. It'll take a long time, I know, but we'll get through this. I love you, Rusty. You're like my brother. And as a sister to you, I'll be here. Promise."

I raised my head up to look at her and she nodded as she patted my head. Something my Father did. I looked back at everyone else who stood there with a saddened look. I didn't know what to do. I almost felt embarrassed that I woke everyone up at nearly 2:30am with my raging bonfire to destroy the memories of my parents. Trust me, though. About a month later I completely regretted burning my parents stuff. Why the hell would I want to burn things that reminded me of my parents? Sure, I was out of control with sadness, but now I wish I had them back. I don't know. Maybe you'd do it too if you found out tonight that your parents died…