Found this on my Xanga account, as I was going through deleting it. I don’t ever remember writing this down. hmmmm. It’s sad because its about the day my dad died. But its not really a bad memory for me because its so vivid. I think its kinda incredible that I can remember every detail in this little note, and some things I left out of it. But I can’t remember typing it, or posting it at all. I can remember things like the color of the varnish on the window sill I stared out of…. but not where I was when I thought to type this out. Hell, like I said I can’t even remember typing it out. So strange.
I was eight years old. it was the summer before second grade; I had just learned to tell time. I was in bed, when I heard it, I painful, heart breaking scream. It was my mother; I didn’t panic, cry or even get out of bed at first. I guess it was because it wasn’t the first time I had heard her scream like that, not the first time at all. Instead I just rubbed my eyes and looked at the VCR clock blinking from the other side of the room. Eight fifty thirty, is what I said its eight fifty thirty in the morning. In reality it was eight fifty three, like I said I had just learned to tell time. Anyway I then crawled out of bed with my blanket wrapped around me. It’s funny how I still remember what was on my blanket… It was pink and had peter rabbit in the center holding a basket… I staggered across the hallway into my parent’s room. There he was my Daddy lying face down on the floor. He was only wearing his underwear. His face was turned to the left with his mouth slightly open and his left arm was lying flat down along side his body. His right arm though, was raised out above his head and still clutched his hand was a glass of milk. It was split on the floor; I can still remember staring at the rim of the blue tinted glass. It was crusty with the milk still on it I just stared at the rim of that glass, for what felt like forever, until I was woken from my trance like state by my mother shaking my Daddy’s body. It was when the glass fell all the way to the ground that I looked up. She was sobbing,
“Carl wake up, Damnit! Carl get up!”
It was useless he was gone. I looked up at her, she never even looked at me, and she never took her eyes off of him. As I looked at her I said,
“He’s purr-pool mommy purr-pool”
I never could say that word right. Then suddenly she fell to her knees, she just started beating on his back as hard as she could screaming
“No! Not now! Carl, No!”
It was then I went running down the hallway toward the living room. My hall had never felt so endless; it was as if there were added doorways and lengths of wall that I had never seen before. By the time I had reached the end of the hall where we kept a video case I was out of breath, I remember hearing my own panting over the screams of my mother. I ran straight up to the video case and hit my knees, I don’t know why but I found myself staring into the moon on the side of a video cover. Dances with wolves I think was the movie. It was blue with red text, and that moon surrounded by clouds… it was all I could see, all I wanted to see. Up to this point I was calm hadn’t even began to shed a tear, it was almost as if I was in control. Like whatever I chose to do next would determine my future, who I was going to become, what happened to my family. I think in some way I thought I could change what had just happened, so I prayed. I was eight years old and praying, and I don’t mean the usual “God bless Mommy, Daddy” kind of prayers, but the kind where someone actually talks to God. I was begging him to go back, to change what I had seen.
“God please, not him God. I need him so much, just please God. Why him? Take her, but not him!”
I was pleading with God, almost making a wager with him… I was eight! It was then my Mother started to walk up the hall searching for the phone. She hid in the bathroom and dialed the number, I leaned with my head against the door listening. She was talking to my Aunt, not the police, not emergency operators, but my Aunt. To be honest I can never remember her ever dialing 911. Then my mother brought a brown paper bag, she said not to look inside just to take it and put it in my bed room closet, under my toys. She just turned back into the bathroom and locked the door. The bag was heavy I remember it being almost half as big as I was, and it smelled awful. I just did what she said and I sat there on my floor, it was after that moment I was gone. I cant even remember her coming out of the bathroom or the emergency personal arriving, but there they were as I sat on the couch in the living room. Policemen, paramedics, firemen… I remember then looking out the window seeing two fire trucks, why in the hell did they bring two fire trucks to a little ranch house in the suburbs? I am, still unsure of how or why I was on the couch, but it was at that moment everything came crashing down. In doorway stood two policemen, and it was then I heard it.
“He’s gone.”
The two words, that I will remember forever. Through the sirens, crying, orders being shouted, and chaotic and hustle and bustle of that moment, I heard that statement whispered. I lost it, I cried for the first time that day, I was screaming as loud as I could kicking, and sobbing… but no one noticed they just let me sit there, until they brought in the stretcher. An EMT with dark curly hair, knelt down beside me, she asked if there was any where I could go some relative or friend close by. I told her my Aunt and Uncle lived across the street, so we started out the door. I can still feel her green rubber gloves against my back. It was as if I could hear the latex squeak as it rubbed against my over sized t-shirt.
“Don’t turn around darlin’” is the only thing anyone said to me.
The neighbors by this time were all out on there lawns, husbands holding their wives, wives jaws dropped, there kids looking our from behind the safety of their windows. So I stopped and turned around and as I started to run back, I saw it… the stretcher, my Daddy… the white sheet the pulled over his face at that very moment. That’s when I knew he was gone, and when I stopped crying. I just turned around and walked back to the EMT, past the neighbors, the police cars, ambulances and both fire trucks… That’s it.
Should I switch to Yale?
Oh…oh my God. YES!
“That’s Why I Chose Yale”
hahahahahahahahahahahahhahahaahahahahahhahahahahahah
bwahahahahahahahahahahahhahahahaahhahahahahahhahahaha
HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHASo glad I go to Ohio State!
