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"This song is talking to the person you haven't even met yet. Maybe they're rolling around in the hay with someone else, but they're not as good as you're gonna be. You just have to wait your turn. He's out there, she's out there. They're just learning what to contrast you against."






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Loss. (Secret #7.)}
Tuesday, January 17, 2012 | 5:15 PM | 0Comment

Internet, don't you just hate when life comes and bites you in the ass?

As I type this, my dinner is sitting beside me, untouched. I can't bring myself to eat it. I can't even look at it.

Today was officially my last day of Winter Break (discounting all the days I did my finals on). I'd basically spent all day watching movies and being lazy. Pretty good day, right? Well.

Ten minutes ago, my dad came into my room telling me that dinner's ready. My dad's one of those people that you can immediately tell when something's wrong, you can see it written all over them. At first he just looked down at the floor. And then when my dad started to cry, I felt this unbelievable dread wash over me, because nothing in the world is worse than seeing your parents cry.

I immediately asked him what happened. I'll tell you what he told me, but first let me tell you some background.

Ever since I was 5 years old, I've gotten my hair chemically straightened. Seeing as I'm black, my hair's curly, and to make it easier to manage, my mom started taking me to a small local salon to chemically straighten it. So, every three months or so for the past 13 years, I've gone back to get it touched up.

The people who run this salon are actually a couple that have known my parents for years. Since way before they had me. And considering how long they've known our family, and how long we've known them, they're some of our closest family friends. I've always called them Uncle and Aunt. Sometimes I even forget that I'm not really related to them. But even if we're not blood related, we're family.

I still remember going when I was very young. Uncle had a booster seat that they put in the swivel chair, and they had bought it just for me. And whenever Uncle rinsed my hair after shampooing it, he would tell me to tell him if the water was too hot. And he never tugged my hair too much when he got the tangles out.

Two weeks ago, the day after Christmas in fact, we'd found out that Uncle had went to the doctor.

As of then, I had just seen him only a few days before. I'd been there to get my hair done so it would look nice for Christmas. I remember very vividly that he looked gaunt. Uncle's a tall man, very tall, and he'd always been pretty slender, but never to the point where he looked unhealthy. But when I saw him this time, it almost looked as if there was only skin pulled tightly over the bones. His cheekbones protruded, and there were heavy shadows under his eyes. I was sort of taken aback as soon as I saw him, and immediately, I'd wondered if something was wrong. I don't think I'd ever seen someone that looked so ill in person before.
The day after Christmas, we found out that he had cancer.

At that time, we didn't know what kind of cancer, or what stage it was in, so we could only cross our fingers that it wouldn't be so bad. After all, my mom had breast cancer, but it was caught so early that she was able to recover.

Well.

When dad came in my room tonight, he told me that Uncle has 48 hours to live.

I've been crying for the past hour, and the tears are still running down my face. And you know, what gets me the most is that this isn't the first time this has happened in the past month.

I didn't write about it, because it's still something that's very shocking to me even now, but I guess now I'm forced to come to terms with it.

Since we've moved into this house, we've lived next door to this family. These two women had an eight year old son, and he was from one of the women's previous marriages. They were all very nice, and my grandma even watched their son after school every day, because he happened to go to the same school as my 8 year old cousin. So they would carpool together, and they were good buds. Also, my dad had become reasonably close friends with one of the women, and they would talk sometimes when she would come to pick up her son.

The past few months, this couple was having some marital problems, and as the one close to my dad had told him, her partner sometimes had a bit of a drinking problem, and that was part of the reason they fought. Over Thanksgiving break, her partner even kicked her out of the house for a few days, that's how badly they fought. Incidentally, since she had nowhere to stay, she actually stayed over at our house for a few days. Her son was in Chicago with her ex-husband, so it was just her. We felt bad because we don't have a guest room, but she seemed willing to sleep on our inflatable mattress in the living room.

After Thanksgiving, their fights got progressively worse, and there was one particular incident when the police were called; police cars and an ambulance were directly by our house and everything. After this fight happened, this woman was basically kicked out of her house again, and her wife warned that she had a month to pack up and take her son and leave. As you could probably guess, this put enormous pressure on this woman. She basically had no place to go with her son and she was being broken up with. My dad offered her help again, and told her that if there was anything we could do, just call.

On Christmas Day, our neighbor's wife rang our doorbell.

My dad answered it, and then he stepped outside to talk to her. Afterwards, he had told us that she looked so lost, so small. She told him that her wife had died.

A few days earlier that week, she herself had gone to get hand surgery at a small hand surgery clinic. She had to have someone to drive her there and back, and, not having anyone else to ask, she asked her wife to do it, even though that was the same person she was kicking out of her house soon. Her partner agreed to, and so she waited in the waiting room as the surgery was performed.

Stay with me, here. Best Friend Rose's stepmom, 'Penny', works at this surgery center. And apparently, this is how Rosie heard about this. Yes, really. You can't make this stuff up.

As this woman was waiting in the waiting room, something happened. I'm still not sure what happened, but apparently she passed out. Then, she stopped breathing. Penny was in the waiting room at the time, and she was performing CPR, trying her absolute best to resuscitate her. My neighbor was never revived. And her partner had seen the whole thing, standing in the doorway and watching in horror.

She was young still. Only 36.

We still don't know exactly what went wrong. A week ago, we saw her paragraph in the paper's obituary section. As for her partner, we haven't heard from her or seen her since my grandma went to her funeral. And as for her son, he was in Chicago at the time of her death, and from now on, he'll be living with his father.

Can I tell you something, Internet? A secret that has haunted me deep down, as long as I can remember? Something that I've never told anybody, ever?

There is nothing on this planet that terrifies more more than death.

I'm sure there's not many people alive right now that welcome death. I'm sure this sort of fear is very common, and in fact, normal. But I swear to God, there is nothing else I can think of that horrifies me and shakes me straight to my core.

There's times when I lie awake at night thinking about it, thinking about the horror of the moment when a life is gone from this Earth and nothing is the same. Just one second. That's all it takes for a life to end and countless lives around it to be changed forever. I've laid in bed with tears falling down my face at even the thought of it.

Every time this sort of tragedy even touches the outer edges of my life, it almost makes me sick. My mind immediately goes to the ones I love. I think, what about my grandparents? My aunts, uncles? My cousins? My best friends? Whoever my future husband will be? God forbid, my parents? What if these people, these people that are so vital to me like oxygen or water or food, disappeared forever? The thought that one day, all of them could be gone...I can't even tell you the feeling I get. Words cannot articulate. It makes me want to throw up, to scream in agony. I can't live without them, but one day, I'll have to. And just thinking about it tears me to shreds.

And that's why I try to never think about it. And most of the time I don't. But every once in a while I do, and then I can't stop. Just yesterday, I was thinking about my grandfather's death. I still cry thinking about how I always told him I'd go fishing with him, but in the end, I never did.

I think that's what's scariest about death; once it happens, all the promises are left in the air and the goodbyes final, and it's too late to go back.

Uncle is in the hospital right now, and he was too weak to even talk to my dad on the phone.

I hate funerals, but it would be a dishonor not to go to Uncle's. He was a part of my life, a part of my family, and knowing that I'll never get to say goodbye and to tell him that I love him is the hardest part. The last time I saw him, I promised him that I would invite him to my high school graduation. He won't get to see me graduate now. In fact, he won't get to see his own grandchildren graduate.

He's a wonderful man. I just hate knowing that he'll leave this Earth without knowing that I feel that way. It's just so horrible. It actually kills me. I feel sick.

I don't know if I'll be able to do my school work tomorrow. I just don't know. I know that it'll give me a sick day on the very first day of second semester, but to be honest, I really don't care. I just need some time to deal with this.

Just to put it out there, I might not update for at least a week or two. I hope you guys can understand. I just need some time.

xo Hopeless Romantic

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