The Moments that Make a Life

Blank. Darkness. You never remember falling asleep do you? No. You only remember waking up. Let’s hope it was a sleep well taken because sleep is the only place I can hide now. Everything is gone.

Beep… beep… beep. I wake up. Head aches, throbbing even... Dark room. Cold air. Smell of chemicals and blood. The voice loud, crushing asks,

“Do you know where you are?”

“A hospital?”

I question, but very sure I know. Although my vision is yellow and fuzzy, what other place would look and feel like this? Only a hospital bed would feel like lying on sheeted straw.

“What day is it?” The voice asks.

“Thursday?” The words come out, but how did I even know the day?

Blank again. Away from the world my spirit hides, preparing me for the life ahead. My mind and soul rests in a place of peace only found by sleep. Even now sleep becomes a gift to my flesh.

I wake up. Dad comes in.

“I have some news. It’s bad….it’s really bad.”

“No. I just want to sleep.”

On June 28^th, 2007 my life changed forever. For just a regular thirteen-year-old girl everything can be taken in a moment. We had gotten the car ready for the drive to Tooele. Our cousins had just moved to Utah two weeks prior. As we drove in this little white, natural gas car of my dad’s I sang along to a CD. I remember it being a Green Day album, but maybe details like that don’t matter on this side of the story.

“I have something to tell you. It can’t wait. Mom and Matthew didn’t make it,” he begins. “And Esther isn’t going to either. Do you want to see her before she dies?”

Heartbeat. “No.”

At least I remember answering no. Later my dad informed me I had said yes. Funny how memories can become distorted, but sometimes memories are the only thing we get to keep, distorted or not. Some obsess over keeping the memories alive; others simply let them fade away, coming and going as they might.

Blank once more. Black. Subconsciously I feel faint sensations on my sleeping skin. Here distance becomes silence. In sleep I am distant from all things, preparing me for the separation of people in my conscious life.

Squeak. I awake. I’m in a wheelchair. A ghost pushes me down the hallway. I would never see this ghost’s face. In my memory of this moment the room looks yellowed and fuzzy, as did the many other scenes played back in my minds eye. There she is, my baby sister, bruised purple eye, stitches down her face, and blankets draping her shoulders. No! Shock, and fear burn my eyes. I might try to describe this feeling to you, but how can I help you comprehend?

Blank. This sleep maybe better be described as simply a state of unconsciousness, unconsciousness of the mind, but not of the soul. These moments changed my soul forever. My spirit would now feel, and see things beyond what most others can. I now live like the superheroes, wrapped in their skin of a secret identity, hiding my biggest secret.

Squeak. I’m lying on a metal bed. I think there’s a mattress underneath my bones, but if there is it doesn’t make much of a difference. I see colorful pictures of butterflies passing by on the ceiling. I imagine sweet children painting those ceiling tiles. Each tile by a child, each child with a story. Perhaps some of them lived and maybe a few of them died, but they all had a story. Ouch! Sharp pain in my chest, and cold metal against my skin.

“Sit as straight as you can.” Where do these voices come from? I hardly ever see a face.

Camera click. No flash. An X-Ray?

Blank. Things are clearer, brighter; much brighter. Sunlight burns the edge of my soul. Silence. It’s as if the earth has awoken, but my mind is on the inside looking out at the world from these broken bones. At the edge of my hospital bed I looked into the eyes of a friend. Still the room of silence lives up to its name. What can I say? It feels like a dream. Don’t speak. If it is a dream, they’ll think I’m crazy. But in the back of my mind, I know it’s real.

How could this happen? Not to me, only to others.

Blank. Even this sleep could be considered a moment. The beautiful thing about moments is they are unrestricted by time constraint or definition. A moment could be one second, one hour, one day, or four months; even a lifetime can be but a small moment. Our life is quite simply made up of moments.

Flowers, posters, and family line the room.

“It smells good in here,” someone mentions.

“I guess I can’t smell the flowers because they’ve been in here the whole time,”

I croak. My voice?

Looking back I only remember thoughts. The words I remember hearing come out my mouth I hardly remember as my own. My memories are as if I was watching and listening to myself from a place across the room.

Ugh. The neck brace is beyond uncomfortable. I can’t remember when I asked, but they said my neck was fine; the brace was just precautionary. What a joke, precautionary discomfort.

“When can I get out of here?” I complain.

“A few days, maybe.”

The next few days don’t mean much, and now I’m home. The silence is deafening. Like a terror it screams in my ears; pain only released in bleeding tears.

I wake to Esther smiling at me. I jump as she flies away with the wind. She really is gone. Dad tells me these illusions are normal, but I can’t shake this feeling that I’m unlike anyone I know now.

Some days I would wish I could vacation to my dreams; a place where we could reunite. We can travel the world using our own invisible wings. If only life could be a dream, one long moment of a dream. Maybe it is.

I’m getting ready for a triple funeral. Pure fear pulses through my heart, my lungs, and my mind. Dead people; they’re still my greatest fear. Irrational isn’t it?

Sitting in a wheelchair hugging and shaking hands, next to the three caskets. I try to hide the scab covering my face. Ugly, but they all know why it’s there. The viewing of my mother is about to begin. I wheel myself out; I would run if my legs were strong enough. Begging my cousin to come with me I shake. She declines. Alone these dark halls terrify me. The church building I attend weekly transforms into the scariest hall I’ve ever passed through. Eerie mortuary people are around every corner. As the caskets are wheeled into the chapel the fear of what’s inside causes me to sit as far away as possible. Tears wet the carpet, but I don’t cry. They said I must have been in shock, but I don’t regret not crying. I just didn’t.

I follow three hearses to the cemetery a mile away. Sitting in the hot sun, huge flowers on top of each casket, we sing a song, then a prayer is said, and we are home again. A terrible vision forever struck in my memory; part of so many of the terrible and beautiful moments of life.

After the funeral I find myself alone. There is family all around me for months, but I’m always on my own. With my younger brother Caleb still in the hospital fighting for life, I’m no longer the priority. Sunk to the bottom I have to find a way out, but pain only abates with time.

So I write; write about the moments of life, the feelings of each moment. Why do we seem to miss the beauty, or the momentum, of the moments of life? How else would we remember life but as moments? We each have enjoyed a moment of emotion while empathizing with a song, or a moment of friendship that lasts two short months or six long years. Everyone has lived through a moment, but how many do we entertain?

Let your soul live in the moments because life isn’t about the journey; it’s about the moments that make up our lives. And maybe this story was only a piece of a moment, the moment of my life…