One.
My mom was always around, and then she wasn't.
It's not like it was her choice. I was nine years old when the cancer spread too far for us to hold onto the hope that she'd make it out. That our lives could go back to the way they were, and this would fade to a distant 'almost.'
It was a rare sunny winter morning when she died. Even as I child, I found something particularly odd about that. Weren't bad things supposed to happen under the cover of storm clouds? How could something so horrible happen when everything looked so cheerful as the dew on the trees thawed under the sunshine.
My dad was a wreck. She was the only woman he'd ever loved. Literally – as high school sweethearts, they were each others' first everything. And now he was left, alone with two kids and a giant hole in his heart. Emmett, three years older than me, turned into a man overnight. He never lost his infinite giddiness, but his eyes seemed to age. They took on the realisation that now, his grown up life had started.
Now, I can hardly remember the weeks after my mom left us. Whatever part of my brain that developed to protect me blocked out everything that happened next. In some ways, it was like a dream.
We went back to school and sunk back into the rhythms of life. Emmett went to football practice, I went to soccer after school. People dropped by the house with trays of food less and less frequently, and Charlie went back to work. Somehow, we managed to build a life that reflected some semblance of normalcy. We ate dinner together every night. We planted ourselves firmly in the living room watching whatever sport was in season at the time – Charlie with a Bud Light in his hand, me and Emmett with a Coke and pretending it was something more adult. To the outside, everything was normal. And I guess it kind of was, except for the telltale signs that something horrible had happened in our lives. Like me, crawling into Emmett's bed every night for a year until he finally, gently kicked me out. And Emmett, beating up a kid at school who made fun of me for not having a mom anymore. And Charlie, sweet, patient Charlie, whose hair had sprouted more greys in the months following my mom's death than he'd ever had before.
But, we figured it out. The three of us became closer than ever. I followed Emmett like a shadow, always wanting to do whatever he was doing, and he let me. Never complained or tried to push me away. He just let me do my thing, and I think it was because he needed me too.
Every year on the anniversary of my mom's death we sat on the living room floor surrounded by takeout and watched our home videos, crying of laughter, then sadness. Charlie was a real memory hoarder, and I'd never been more thankful for it than on these days. He had hours and hours of grainy footage on his sleazy-style cam corder. He and my mom on their honeymoon, my mom's beautiful blue eyes glistening as she smiled and laughed at him while overlooking Niagara Falls. My mom, swollen and looking miserable with an unusually large baby in her belly (obviously Emmett). My mom, swollen belly again but less miserable as she painted my nursery and a toddler Emmett finger painted beside her.
Slowly the sting of my mom's absence started to fade, but the wounds never fully healed over. Despite all the love in my life from my family and our friends, as I grew up I was always painfully aware that no matter what, those you love eventually have to leave you.