HOME | DD

Description
I’m afraid. Afraid for what is going to happen now. It all seems to be over. Life is over and I have barely begun to love. I’m only 17 God damn it!!! I can’t die now. It’s too soon.

I wanted to do so many things before I died. Y’know normal kid things like go bar crawling with my friends when I turned 18 in three weeks, go clubbing for the very first time. Get married, have children. But that definitely isn’t going to happen now. I’m dying and I can feel it, even if I can’t feel my limp and fragile body. I know it’s limp and fragile because I can hear the doctors saying so. They’re standing all around me, acting as though I’m not here, like I can’t hear them. But I can.

I can still do a lot of things. Like wonder. Wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t gotten sick, wonder what would have happened if I had gone out with Jimmy McPherson when he’d asked me. But y’know what the main thing is I’m wondering about? I’m wondering about the flash before death concept. I thought they said that before you died, you life flashed before your eyes. That hasn’t happened. God damned Liars!

Although, laying here and pondering, I guess my life is flashing before my eyes. I’m my last moments of life I can’t help but remember all of the peeks in my life. Like grandma’s house. I remember the time me and Johnny, dear sweet Johnny, climbed up the old oak tree that hung lucidly over the river beside our Grandparent’s house. That house…it was so beautiful.

I can still picture it even though I haven’t seen it since I was seven years old. It was a double story place made out of red brick and weatherboard. Ivy outlined and consumed the brick and weatherboard panelling of the riverside face of the house. Old shutters hung from the Classic style windows. White paint decorated the shutters in a splotchy texture. The paint had begun to flake because of the unpredictable weather that always came through in Hillston. It had a tile roof that had been replaced when I was six because it leaked like a rusted tin can. The chimney that bellowed white puffs of smoke from deep within it’s burning belly was made of the same red brick that half of the house had been built from.

Yeah, that house was beautiful. Like one of those houses that you would expect to see in movies like “A Walk To Remember.”. I’d have to say that the most amazing feature of that old house was the phenomenal garden that lined the gravel driveway leading up to the house. It was such a beautiful sight to see in Spring. Every flower that you could think of littered the garden beds. Petunias and daffodils, not to mention violets and even roses! But what was more amazing than the lucious mix of colour was the smell! I remember that smell, and even laying here in this bed I can still smell it.

That smell used to filter through the open windows of dad’s old ford sedan and fill the car with the most beautiful perfume ever smelt. I wonder if that scent had ever been bottled…I would have definitely bought it. My Grandparent’s place sure was magical. I loved to spend my entire holiday up there with Johnny, playing around and swimming. Doing things that kids do. That was until he got sick..

My Brother. My Johnny. Just thinking of him and his sweet lively face makes me want to burst into tears, but I can’t even do that anymore. I’m too weak. Poor sweet Johnny. Laying here in this uncomfortable bed reminds me of what Johnny went through when he got sick. He had to endure these same sterile and hard beds. I remember every intricate detail of his death.

He had died when we were twelve. I remember we, me and my parents (Or should I say my parents and I? Nah…it’s just me thinking.) had stayed with him until the end. He had been submitted to the New England hospital in Maitland on the 16th August 1995. He had collapsed in the middle of giving a speech in class. I can even remember what the speech was about. The lifecycle of the Centipede. He had something wrong with his heart. An abnormality as the doctors called it. But abnormality meant nothing to a twelve year old girl who just wanted her brother to get out of bed so he could come and play.

This abnormality with his heart always caused his blood to clot. I can’t remember what the name of the ‘disease’ was, but when they mentioned that big scientific word I knew there was something definitely wrong with Johnny. I could see it in his face whenever he would look down at me from his bed. He was in pain, both physical and mental. He wasn’t allowed to move around otherwise the blood clots could travel back to his heart and kill him. I think the fact that he wasn’t allowed to move was killing him the most. To see his sorrowful eyes, pleading to be able to just get up and run around.

“He always was a mover.” Mum said to me. “He was moving from day 1. When the nurse laid him down next to you on the birthing blanket he was kicking his legs and moving his arms to a beat that nobody else could hear. He sure was a wild child and he had hold of your hand, Elizabeth, trying to get you to move along too.” She told me this after his funeral. I guess she was still in shock after having to bury her son, my brother. But he always was a mover…

Johnny died on September 21st, 1995. I was there with him when it happened. I was…I was sitting…with him. It’s still so hard, even though it seems like forever ago that it happened. I was sitting with him while mum and dad went to get themselves some coffee from the coffee machine and me a packet of Doritos from the vending machine in the waiting room.

I was talking to Johnny like I always did, even though he didn’t talk as much. The clotting exhausted him so much. I told him about school and how everyone in 6C, our class, hoped that he’d get better soon. They all wanted him to come back and play football. They all said he was the best player. He was smiling while he listened to me talk about all of his friends, but there was something different about him today. There was something at the corner of his eye. I had to look hard, but there it was…a tear. It flowed down his porcelain cheek, staining his skin and later making his sterile white pillow damp.

His eye flickered to me, watching me for a moment. “Liz.” He said. His voice was so croaky, I guess it was from trying to hold back the tears that had now begun to flow freely down his young face. I sat there staring at him. I couldn’t answer. It was disturbing to see my brother cry. After all he was supposed to be the tough one, the one that protected me and comforted me when I was scared and upset. “Liz.” He said again, softer this time, almost pleading. I came back to my senses and I guess he saw it because he sat up!! For the love of God why did he sit up!? His tears still spilled down over his cheeks. It made me so sad just seeing him like that. I cried right there, right along with my deteriorating brother. But, he was still smiling. His pale and cracked lips parted to allow him to speak once more “Liz…I can’t take it any more. I’d rather die than lay here helpless. I want to be able to move again. I can’t do this anymore!” He sounded so desperate, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t do anything.

He was still smiling, it was an eerie and knowing smile like on war victims when they fade into the darkness of death. I knew. I knew that he was dying. Right here before me he was dying, and he knew it too. All of the colour had drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale and he had hunched over himself, his breathing growing shallow. “Tell Mum and Dad…”

…I remember his last words so clearly. They’re still imprinted in my brain. “Tell Mum and Dad, tell them…that I died happy. That I died moving. I was always moving after all.” His voice trailed off at the end, his smile fading barely. He looked so peaceful for a moment, eyes half lidded in odd contentment. Then his eyes rolled back into his head. His beautiful hazel eyes, our hazel eyes. He fell from his bed and onto the floor at my feet.

I can remember hearing myself screaming uncontrollably, unable to move from my seat. I remember the doctor and nurse coming in, and the doctor checking for a pulse. I remember my parents coming in and my mother falling to the floor in a fit of hysteria when they had told her he was gone. I remember the look on my father’s face. He was staring at me, eyes wide with fear and shock, mouth gaping like a fish out of water.

And…I remember the slipping feeling I had. I remember feeling like a piece of myself had disappeared right along with my brother. Like he’d grasped part of my soul and whisked it away from me. I guess that is the way all siblings feel when their kin dies. But…he was my twin and he was my better half. When I lost him, I lost myself and even today I haven’t gotten that piece of me back.

That day destroyed me. For a long time I remember being in a Youth Health Facility. In lament terms, a nut house. I couldn’t cope with anything after my brother’s death, so my parents sent me away. It killed them too. Everywhere I went, I saw him. I could feel him, and reach out and touch him. He was by my side. I know he was. Everyone thought that I was insane. Even I did for a very long time. Late at night in my bunk I would tell myself “You’re insane, Johnny isn’t here.” But from the darkness of my room would come the reply “Yes I am. I’m here Elizabeth. I’m not going to leave your side” and there he would be, sitting on the side of my mattress, smiling down at me like he had done the last day.

I don’t remember much about the nut house except for the constant counselling sessions that I was sent to and the terrible food that was provided. I think I lost twenty kilos while I was in that god forsaken place for crazies. The time passed quickly, I guess because I blocked the sense of time out. It was easier not to know. When the psychologists thought I had made “Amazing progress and a complete recovery” they recommended that I go home. That was about two years after I had gone in. Now, at 14 I went through a serious depressive stage, like most teenagers. But mine wasn’t over silly and trivial things like a lost boyfriend. I still mourned the death of my brother. I grew severely suicidal. I remember being close several times. Mostly I resorted to cutting. The first time, I hadn’t cut deep enough for the blood loss to be lethal. The blood clotted on it’s own and I survived. The second time I had cut deep enough but my mother found me. She was so distressed by it and she yelled at me over and over while I was in hospital recovering. I just smiled at her. I didn’t care that she yelled at me. I just wanted to be with Johnny. That’s all that mattered to me.

The third time I tried…I still have the scars from it. It was at my school. I figured that if I did it in the girl’s bathroom then nobody would find me. I had taken one of the scalpels from the science lab and with it I gouged a line from my wrist up to my shoulder. I wanted to bleed quickly so I’d die before anyone could find me. However, unlucky for me one of the preppy bitches at our school found me and called for the nurse. I got rushed to hospital for that episode too. After these three severe attempts, I kind of gave up on suicide. I kind of realized that living was more important and that if I couldn’t do it properly by now, I was meant to live. I guess depression can do strange things to a person’s mental state.

Instead I took out my anger and sorrow through poetry. It was my creative outlet. Made me feel good about myself. I think I can still remember one of the stanzas…
“Sleep sweet, cherub of mine,
Sleep sweet in the depth of my mind.
Let your soul rest here.
Death you will no longer fear.”
It sounds like gibberish to me now, but I wrote based on emotion, not on sense. My life did improve after a while. I mean I started to accept the fact that my brother was gone and he wasn’t coming back. It was inevitable that people die. Life didn’t seem so rough and everything was evening out. I went to school and settled back into routine fine. They wouldn’t let me back for a while after my little episode in the bathroom. It all seemed to be going well until my Grandmother passed away. No, until my Grandmother was murdered.

It was a well-known fact that my Grandmother liked to contribute to the community, liked to keep the area clean. Every Tuesday afternoon she would go out and pick up rubbish with a few of her Mah Jong buddies. She was so giving, and yet on Tuesday 29th June, a car hit my Grandmother. Oh no, it wasn’t like one of those idiot pedestrian accidents either. My grandmother was going up the stairs to the Hillston train station. Seems odd that a car could hit her on a set of stairs, and I still can’t get it through my head how it happened.

The driver’s excuse was that she was under stress, on a new prescription and the two toddlers in the back seat were distracting her. This negligent driver had run off the road and straight into the so-called protective railing beside the stairs. The railing bent inward and the car ploughed straight into my grandmother, sending her into the air. We were told she died instantly, and I can only hope she did…

I remember how hard the loss was on my mother. We all took it pretty hard but she the worst. She kept her cool for about six months but, I remember…In the shopping center at Greenhills, she broke down. Just broke down. I was helping her with the groceries and she wanted a can of beets from the bottom shelf. I bent down to get it and when I stood up, she was standing there with tears in her eyes. She cupped her face in her hands and kind of slumped to the ground in a heap. The center had to call Dad to come and pick her up. I didn’t have a cell phone, nor would I ever have one, so I couldn’t call him myself.

I can still see myself having to walk up to the customer service checkout and ask the man behind the counter to ring my father. He was nice enough about it, but I could see how embarrassed he was for me. But, it didn’t worry me. What worried me was the thought I was going to lose my mother too. Not lose her like I lost my brother and grandmother, but mentally. It scared the shit out of me.

My fears became worse when we had to put my mother into a care facility. I remember her face when we left her there, the way she stared hopelessly at us, like she had no idea. Her smile that was the same smile that…No. I’m not going to think about that again.
I can still picture the room that she was in. It was like a dorm room, except the occupants had curtains to separate their living spaces. My mum, she was so proud of her little corner. I remember her saying “Look Lizzy, I got the window corner. I was the lucky one!” She reminded me of a child. Of myself when I was about six. It made me cry, to see her so helpless. I didn’t cry in front of her, I knew how upset it made her…

I am drawn away from my diminishing thoughts by the sound of a voice not too far from my ear. “Her lips are moving! What’s she trying to say?” It sounds like Dad’s voice, and I can’t help but smile. I force my lips to move again, and I actually hear myself this time. “Tell Mum…Dad tell mum. Tell here I went happy. That I went in silence. I was the quiet one, after all.” My father began to cry. The first time I’d seen him cry and I couldn’t even see him, or comfort him.

I guess he felt like this was his fault. He had been driving the car when the semi had hit us. He had escaped with minor injuries and well…now my heart and lungs were failing and my entire body was paralyzed from the neck down. It really wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t get out of the way in time. “Daddy…don’t worry.” I managed to whisper…

“He was moving from day 1. When the nurse laid him down next to you on the birthing blanket he was kicking his legs and moving his arms to a beat that nobody else could hear. He sure was a wild child and he had hold of your hand, Elizabeth, trying to get you to move along too.” You were right Mum, and right to the end and beyond he was moving, and he had hold of my hand. Leading me into the darkness.

I guess I must have looked like one of the war victims who knew their time had come. I guess I did…I did…

Flat line.

Description
I’m afraid. Afraid for what is going to happen now. It all seems to be over. Life is over and I have barely begun to love. I’m only 17 God damn it!!! I can’t die now. It’s too soon.

I wanted to do so many things before I died. Y’know normal kid things like go bar crawling with my friends when I turned 18 in three weeks, go clubbing for the very first time. Get married, have children. But that definitely isn’t going to happen now. I’m dying and I can feel it, even if I can’t feel my limp and fragile body. I know it’s limp and fragile because I can hear the doctors saying so. They’re standing all around me, acting as though I’m not here, like I can’t hear them. But I can.

I can still do a lot of things. Like wonder. Wonder what life would have been like if I hadn’t gotten sick, wonder what would have happened if I had gone out with Jimmy McPherson when he’d asked me. But y’know what the main thing is I’m wondering about? I’m wondering about the flash before death concept. I thought they said that before you died, you life flashed before your eyes. That hasn’t happened. God damned Liars!

Although, laying here and pondering, I guess my life is flashing before my eyes. I’m my last moments of life I can’t help but remember all of the peeks in my life. Like grandma’s house. I remember the time me and Johnny, dear sweet Johnny, climbed up the old oak tree that hung lucidly over the river beside our Grandparent’s house. That house…it was so beautiful.

I can still picture it even though I haven’t seen it since I was seven years old. It was a double story place made out of red brick and weatherboard. Ivy outlined and consumed the brick and weatherboard panelling of the riverside face of the house. Old shutters hung from the Classic style windows. White paint decorated the shutters in a splotchy texture. The paint had begun to flake because of the unpredictable weather that always came through in Hillston. It had a tile roof that had been replaced when I was six because it leaked like a rusted tin can. The chimney that bellowed white puffs of smoke from deep within it’s burning belly was made of the same red brick that half of the house had been built from.

Yeah, that house was beautiful. Like one of those houses that you would expect to see in movies like “A Walk To Remember.”. I’d have to say that the most amazing feature of that old house was the phenomenal garden that lined the gravel driveway leading up to the house. It was such a beautiful sight to see in Spring. Every flower that you could think of littered the garden beds. Petunias and daffodils, not to mention violets and even roses! But what was more amazing than the lucious mix of colour was the smell! I remember that smell, and even laying here in this bed I can still smell it.

That smell used to filter through the open windows of dad’s old ford sedan and fill the car with the most beautiful perfume ever smelt. I wonder if that scent had ever been bottled…I would have definitely bought it. My Grandparent’s place sure was magical. I loved to spend my entire holiday up there with Johnny, playing around and swimming. Doing things that kids do. That was until he got sick..

My Brother. My Johnny. Just thinking of him and his sweet lively face makes me want to burst into tears, but I can’t even do that anymore. I’m too weak. Poor sweet Johnny. Laying here in this uncomfortable bed reminds me of what Johnny went through when he got sick. He had to endure these same sterile and hard beds. I remember every intricate detail of his death.

He had died when we were twelve. I remember we, me and my parents (Or should I say my parents and I? Nah…it’s just me thinking.) had stayed with him until the end. He had been submitted to the New England hospital in Maitland on the 16th August 1995. He had collapsed in the middle of giving a speech in class. I can even remember what the speech was about. The lifecycle of the Centipede. He had something wrong with his heart. An abnormality as the doctors called it. But abnormality meant nothing to a twelve year old girl who just wanted her brother to get out of bed so he could come and play.

This abnormality with his heart always caused his blood to clot. I can’t remember what the name of the ‘disease’ was, but when they mentioned that big scientific word I knew there was something definitely wrong with Johnny. I could see it in his face whenever he would look down at me from his bed. He was in pain, both physical and mental. He wasn’t allowed to move around otherwise the blood clots could travel back to his heart and kill him. I think the fact that he wasn’t allowed to move was killing him the most. To see his sorrowful eyes, pleading to be able to just get up and run around.

“He always was a mover.” Mum said to me. “He was moving from day 1. When the nurse laid him down next to you on the birthing blanket he was kicking his legs and moving his arms to a beat that nobody else could hear. He sure was a wild child and he had hold of your hand, Elizabeth, trying to get you to move along too.” She told me this after his funeral. I guess she was still in shock after having to bury her son, my brother. But he always was a mover…

Johnny died on September 21st, 1995. I was there with him when it happened. I was…I was sitting…with him. It’s still so hard, even though it seems like forever ago that it happened. I was sitting with him while mum and dad went to get themselves some coffee from the coffee machine and me a packet of Doritos from the vending machine in the waiting room.

I was talking to Johnny like I always did, even though he didn’t talk as much. The clotting exhausted him so much. I told him about school and how everyone in 6C, our class, hoped that he’d get better soon. They all wanted him to come back and play football. They all said he was the best player. He was smiling while he listened to me talk about all of his friends, but there was something different about him today. There was something at the corner of his eye. I had to look hard, but there it was…a tear. It flowed down his porcelain cheek, staining his skin and later making his sterile white pillow damp.

His eye flickered to me, watching me for a moment. “Liz.” He said. His voice was so croaky, I guess it was from trying to hold back the tears that had now begun to flow freely down his young face. I sat there staring at him. I couldn’t answer. It was disturbing to see my brother cry. After all he was supposed to be the tough one, the one that protected me and comforted me when I was scared and upset. “Liz.” He said again, softer this time, almost pleading. I came back to my senses and I guess he saw it because he sat up!! For the love of God why did he sit up!? His tears still spilled down over his cheeks. It made me so sad just seeing him like that. I cried right there, right along with my deteriorating brother. But, he was still smiling. His pale and cracked lips parted to allow him to speak once more “Liz…I can’t take it any more. I’d rather die than lay here helpless. I want to be able to move again. I can’t do this anymore!” He sounded so desperate, and I couldn’t move, couldn’t answer him. Couldn’t do anything.

He was still smiling, it was an eerie and knowing smile like on war victims when they fade into the darkness of death. I knew. I knew that he was dying. Right here before me he was dying, and he knew it too. All of the colour had drained from his face, leaving him deathly pale and he had hunched over himself, his breathing growing shallow. “Tell Mum and Dad…”

…I remember his last words so clearly. They’re still imprinted in my brain. “Tell Mum and Dad, tell them…that I died happy. That I died moving. I was always moving after all.” His voice trailed off at the end, his smile fading barely. He looked so peaceful for a moment, eyes half lidded in odd contentment. Then his eyes rolled back into his head. His beautiful hazel eyes, our hazel eyes. He fell from his bed and onto the floor at my feet.

I can remember hearing myself screaming uncontrollably, unable to move from my seat. I remember the doctor and nurse coming in, and the doctor checking for a pulse. I remember my parents coming in and my mother falling to the floor in a fit of hysteria when they had told her he was gone. I remember the look on my father’s face. He was staring at me, eyes wide with fear and shock, mouth gaping like a fish out of water.

And…I remember the slipping feeling I had. I remember feeling like a piece of myself had disappeared right along with my brother. Like he’d grasped part of my soul and whisked it away from me. I guess that is the way all siblings feel when their kin dies. But…he was my twin and he was my better half. When I lost him, I lost myself and even today I haven’t gotten that piece of me back.

That day destroyed me. For a long time I remember being in a Youth Health Facility. In lament terms, a nut house. I couldn’t cope with anything after my brother’s death, so my parents sent me away. It killed them too. Everywhere I went, I saw him. I could feel him, and reach out and touch him. He was by my side. I know he was. Everyone thought that I was insane. Even I did for a very long time. Late at night in my bunk I would tell myself “You’re insane, Johnny isn’t here.” But from the darkness of my room would come the reply “Yes I am. I’m here Elizabeth. I’m not going to leave your side” and there he would be, sitting on the side of my mattress, smiling down at me like he had done the last day.

I don’t remember much about the nut house except for the constant counselling sessions that I was sent to and the terrible food that was provided. I think I lost twenty kilos while I was in that god forsaken place for crazies. The time passed quickly, I guess because I blocked the sense of time out. It was easier not to know. When the psychologists thought I had made “Amazing progress and a complete recovery” they recommended that I go home. That was about two years after I had gone in. Now, at 14 I went through a serious depressive stage, like most teenagers. But mine wasn’t over silly and trivial things like a lost boyfriend. I still mourned the death of my brother. I grew severely suicidal. I remember being close several times. Mostly I resorted to cutting. The first time, I hadn’t cut deep enough for the blood loss to be lethal. The blood clotted on it’s own and I survived. The second time I had cut deep enough but my mother found me. She was so distressed by it and she yelled at me over and over while I was in hospital recovering. I just smiled at her. I didn’t care that she yelled at me. I just wanted to be with Johnny. That’s all that mattered to me.

The third time I tried…I still have the scars from it. It was at my school. I figured that if I did it in the girl’s bathroom then nobody would find me. I had taken one of the scalpels from the science lab and with it I gouged a line from my wrist up to my shoulder. I wanted to bleed quickly so I’d die before anyone could find me. However, unlucky for me one of the preppy bitches at our school found me and called for the nurse. I got rushed to hospital for that episode too. After these three severe attempts, I kind of gave up on suicide. I kind of realized that living was more important and that if I couldn’t do it properly by now, I was meant to live. I guess depression can do strange things to a person’s mental state.

Instead I took out my anger and sorrow through poetry. It was my creative outlet. Made me feel good about myself. I think I can still remember one of the stanzas…
“Sleep sweet, cherub of mine,
Sleep sweet in the depth of my mind.
Let your soul rest here.
Death you will no longer fear.”
It sounds like gibberish to me now, but I wrote based on emotion, not on sense. My life did improve after a while. I mean I started to accept the fact that my brother was gone and he wasn’t coming back. It was inevitable that people die. Life didn’t seem so rough and everything was evening out. I went to school and settled back into routine fine. They wouldn’t let me back for a while after my little episode in the bathroom. It all seemed to be going well until my Grandmother passed away. No, until my Grandmother was murdered.

It was a well-known fact that my Grandmother liked to contribute to the community, liked to keep the area clean. Every Tuesday afternoon she would go out and pick up rubbish with a few of her Mah Jong buddies. She was so giving, and yet on Tuesday 29th June, a car hit my Grandmother. Oh no, it wasn’t like one of those idiot pedestrian accidents either. My grandmother was going up the stairs to the Hillston train station. Seems odd that a car could hit her on a set of stairs, and I still can’t get it through my head how it happened.

The driver’s excuse was that she was under stress, on a new prescription and the two toddlers in the back seat were distracting her. This negligent driver had run off the road and straight into the so-called protective railing beside the stairs. The railing bent inward and the car ploughed straight into my grandmother, sending her into the air. We were told she died instantly, and I can only hope she did…

I remember how hard the loss was on my mother. We all took it pretty hard but she the worst. She kept her cool for about six months but, I remember…In the shopping center at Greenhills, she broke down. Just broke down. I was helping her with the groceries and she wanted a can of beets from the bottom shelf. I bent down to get it and when I stood up, she was standing there with tears in her eyes. She cupped her face in her hands and kind of slumped to the ground in a heap. The center had to call Dad to come and pick her up. I didn’t have a cell phone, nor would I ever have one, so I couldn’t call him myself.

I can still see myself having to walk up to the customer service checkout and ask the man behind the counter to ring my father. He was nice enough about it, but I could see how embarrassed he was for me. But, it didn’t worry me. What worried me was the thought I was going to lose my mother too. Not lose her like I lost my brother and grandmother, but mentally. It scared the shit out of me.

My fears became worse when we had to put my mother into a care facility. I remember her face when we left her there, the way she stared hopelessly at us, like she had no idea. Her smile that was the same smile that…No. I’m not going to think about that again.
I can still picture the room that she was in. It was like a dorm room, except the occupants had curtains to separate their living spaces. My mum, she was so proud of her little corner. I remember her saying “Look Lizzy, I got the window corner. I was the lucky one!” She reminded me of a child. Of myself when I was about six. It made me cry, to see her so helpless. I didn’t cry in front of her, I knew how upset it made her…

I am drawn away from my diminishing thoughts by the sound of a voice not too far from my ear. “Her lips are moving! What’s she trying to say?” It sounds like Dad’s voice, and I can’t help but smile. I force my lips to move again, and I actually hear myself this time. “Tell Mum…Dad tell mum. Tell here I went happy. That I went in silence. I was the quiet one, after all.” My father began to cry. The first time I’d seen him cry and I couldn’t even see him, or comfort him.

I guess he felt like this was his fault. He had been driving the car when the semi had hit us. He had escaped with minor injuries and well…now my heart and lungs were failing and my entire body was paralyzed from the neck down. It really wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t get out of the way in time. “Daddy…don’t worry.” I managed to whisper…

“He was moving from day 1. When the nurse laid him down next to you on the birthing blanket he was kicking his legs and moving his arms to a beat that nobody else could hear. He sure was a wild child and he had hold of your hand, Elizabeth, trying to get you to move along too.” You were right Mum, and right to the end and beyond he was moving, and he had hold of my hand. Leading me into the darkness.

I guess I must have looked like one of the war victims who knew their time had come. I guess I did…I did…

Flat line.