25 songs, 25 days, 25 stories

Day 03

A song that reminds you of one/both of your parents:

The River of Dreams by Billy Joel

"In the middle of the night, I go walking in my sleep!!", my dad's voice travelled around the car, totally off key. My mum giggled. Eww.

"Dad. Shut. Up. Please. That song is so old! Older than me!! Ugh", I rolled my eyes at the back of his chair. I put in my earplugs and blasted P!nk at the max volume. I couldn't hear my parents talking, or my sister mumbling to me about some celebrity or what ever. 

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My parents liked to travel. I had been flown to Mexico, Africa, Peru and England, all because that was the "country of the year" for our family. I was fifteen when we went to France and I loved every moment spent in that wonderful country. I worshipped every minute. Then we went to America.

Holy, it was busy in New York. People everywhere. Tourists, workers, bosses, cars, taxis. It was so hectic. I turned sixteen in America and had my first whole bottle of beer in an old pub that was what my aunt would have called "a hole in the wall". It was so fun. Then I got a boyfriend.

I became like a lot of other teenagers and started to ignore my parents. I would sneak out at night, break my curfew and wear clothes "not suitable" to clubs with friends, because my boyfriend was eighteen, and told me to do those kind of things. I grew away from my parents. Far away.

Three months before my seventeenth birthday, we decided to come back home, back to Australia.

Now each time my family travelled, we always had a travelling song, and we had  to listen to it at lest once while in each city. That particular song for that trip, was The River of Dreams.

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We were on our way to the airport when it happened. The River of Dreams was playing. This car came out of nowhere and dad swerved, so as not to hit it. The car skidded, the rubber screeching, the smell of burning plastic around me.

The car flipped. It crashed. It rolled off the road. Everyone died. Except me.

Somehow I survived that and yet I wish I did die that day, because now I realize I had nothing to live for.

The last words I ever heard my parents say were "in the middle of the night". And I didn't even play that song at their funeral.

So what do I have to live for? Why not just stop breathing? I think I will give that a try.