Living in a Jumble of Wishes
Chapter 21
It has been exactly four weeks since Zack and I broke up. Our break up and what I told the popular clique remained the school’s hot topic for two weeks.
People were giving me impressed looks all the time and many people complimented my courage so I got a lot of friends out of it.
Even when I was with the popular clique, I didn’t have that much friends.
And unlike the populars, those people were genuine.
The popular clique kept sending me glares –especially Zack—but I ignored them and when they tried to bully me, I would stand up for myself and everyone around me would stand up for me too.
They eventually found out that they weren’t in control anymore. The whole school was on my side now and against them.
They stopped bullying people and just stayed together in their own usual place.
Carla, Kate, and I were fine again. It seemed like things were slowly getting better, just like they were before the popular incident.
Landon and I have been seeing each other almost every day. We had been on seven dates and each one was amazing.
Every moment I spent with Landon was amazing. He always had little surprises for me like sometimes I would come home from school and find him on my front porch with a flower in his hands and his school bag still with him. He always arrived on time when we had dates and he always got me little gifts like a little teddy bear or a bracelet. The thing I loved the most would probably be the letters he writes me. Every week he gives me a one page letter. I’m saving them all because they’re beautiful.
Everything in my life seemed perfect right now. It was too perfect so I was expecting something not so perfect to happen. It had to come at some point, life is not perfect, and that incident came but it was much, much worse than I expected.
I came home from school one day and everything seemed normal. I had a sweet little text from Landon on my phone, Carla and Kate were planning to meet up later for a movie, and I had just gotten an amazing grade on my math test.
I unlocked my front door and when I walked in, I heard my mom crying.
I froze. “Mom?” I called out. She didn’t answer but I could still hear her frantic crying.
I dropped my bag and ran upstairs where her voice was coming from.
“Wake up! Please wake up!” I heard her screaming.
I could hear my heart beating in my ears as I ran towards their room. I stumbled a bit but that didn’t stop me.
When I arrived, I pushed the door open and it slammed against the wall.
That caught my mom’s attention and her gaze snapped to meet mine. It was the first time I had ever seen her like that. Her eyes were red and puffy, tears streaming down her face, her clothes wrinkled, and her hair messy.
I opened my mouth to ask her what was going on but my eyes fell on my dad before I could.
There he was, on the bed, dressed in his jeans and white shirt, one arm on his chest and the other lying lifelessly on the bed. His eyes were staring at a spot on the ceiling. Blue eyes cold, blank, lifeless. Dead.
No.
This was not possible. He was fine. My dad was perfectly fine. We had his favorite dinner yesterday and I watched Animal Planet with him for hours. We talked about college and the future last night.
We had breakfast together this morning. He was laughing and joking the whole time.
He was fine!
“Dad?” I called out, my voice sounding weird to my own two ears. “Dad this is not funny.”
He didn’t reply and my mother started sobbing again, holding onto his lifeless hand.
“No,” I whispered, shaking my head. “No.”
Then everything went black.
When I woke up, I was in my own bed, sleeping on the comfortable pillows but that didn’t stop my head from pounding.
What happened? I wondered but as soon as that thought entered my mind, I remembered everything.
Dad.
I jumped out of bed and stumbled, almost falling to the floor but someone caught me.
I whipped my head so fast that my neck almost cracked.
“Slowly,” Landon murmured in my ear, carrying me back to the bed.
“No! I have to see him! You don’t understand!” I started yelling. He just held me tighter to him and I started thrashing in his arms.
“Landon! Let go of me! I have to see my dad!” I yelled, my voice getting louder with every word.
“Shh calm down,” he said softly, still holding me.
That was all it took for me to know that he was really gone. He did die. It wasn’t just a nightmare I had when I passed out. My dad was dead.
My screams turned into sobs. I held onto Landon as if he was all that I had left. He didn’t say anything, he just held me tightly as tears escaped my eyes. I didn’t even know it was possible for a human being to cry that much.
“M-mom,” I stuttered, hiccupping. “W-where is s-she?”
“She’s downstairs with her sisters,” Landon said quietly. My mom had two sisters. They were both older than her and they always were protective of her. I don’t see them much anymore because they live a bit far from where we live but they were here now. That’s what family is about. They were here for their little sister as she lost the most important person in her life.
“H-how?” I asked the question I’ve been thinking about ever since I saw my dad’s lifeless eyes.
Landon didn’t need me to elaborate because he understood what I meant. He knew what my question was and he answered it.
“Heart attack,” he replied in a low voice.
And then the tears started again.
It was an hour later that I ran out of tears. I pulled away from Landon and looked at his blue shirt. It was all wet from my tears.
Without saying a word, I stood up and walked to my drawers. I took out one of his shirts that he kept here. I picked the green one because I liked it on him. I gave it to him then walked into my bathroom to wash my face.
When I looked into the mirror, I barely recognized myself. My face looked just like my mom’s face when I walked into their room.
I was still in shock. I couldn’t understand how a person could be talking with you and in the next minute he’d be lying on his bed, dead.
How can a person’s life just… End? How does death work?
How come people leave without a warning? What happens to them after that? Is there really something after death?
How do their families cope? How do I understand what just happened? How do I carry on with my life without my dad?
I had never expected this to happen. The death of someone I know, especially one of my parents, had never even crossed my mind. I had never thought it was possible. I never thought of death.
And it took me by surprise.
How many people in the world were losing their dads right now too? Were they with him at the hospital, expecting his death? Or were they like me, returning from school and finding him dead?
Did they accept it? Did they understand it? Did they even have previous experiences with the death of a loved one?
“I was ten years old when I walked into my dad’s room and watched him kill himself,” Landon said, suddenly appearing in my small bathroom.
My head snapped towards him and my eyes widened as my jaw dropped.
He sighed and started from the beginning, his eyes sad. “When my parents fell in love, my dad didn’t have a lot of money but my mom didn’t care especially since her parents had more than enough money. They got married and two months later she got pregnant with me. My dad was working but his job wasn’t paying enough so my mom was working as well. Together they were able to raise me and get everything we needed. When my mom got pregnant with Hannah, we were having a tough time. They weren’t expecting another baby but they tried to cope. My parents asked my grandparents for financial help but they didn’t help them out.” His tone was bitter as spoke about his grandparents.
“They were very selfish and they wouldn’t give a penny to anyone, not even their own daughter. So my parents started working more and more. There were some nights when they didn’t even return home before I was already asleep. I couldn’t help with anything back then. I was just a little kid. Two days before Hannah was born, my dad lost his job. He was blamed for something he didn’t do so he got fired. My mom said that they’ll make it. They’ll try but for the next few days my dad was home alone most of the time and when I saw him, he would be writing numbers on papers and he never got satisfied with the answer of his calculations. One day, I was supposed to go to my friend’s house after school but something came up so his mom dropped me off at home. I went in and headed straight upstairs to my dad’s room, knowing he would be there like every other day. The moment I opened the door, I heard the gunshot and I saw my dad fall to the floor in his own pool of blood with a gun in his hand. At the exact same minute, his cell phone on the bed started ringing and I answered it when I saw it was my mom. I was crying so much, I was barely able to answer it. But it was my aunt on the phone and she said that my mom was giving birth. I don’t really remember the rest of the day but I can still remember my dad shooting himself, his shocked eyes on me as he fell lifelessly to the floor.”
“Why are you telling me this?” I said as I started crying again. Apparently, I still had tears. I knew that Landon’s dad wasn’t there but I had no idea it was that tragic.
“I am telling you this because I want you to look at me and see that life does not end there. Life is not perfect, people have weak moments, and we lose the ones we love the most but we find other people to love. The same day I lost my dad, I got Hannah. And my life didn’t stop there. I got great friends at school and I got you, my amazing girlfriend. The ones we love might not be here anymore but they will always remain in your heart.”
I hugged him tightly because I was so grateful for him being here for me. I needed him right now. I was grateful that he didn’t just tell me that he’s sorry and that things will get better. He knew exactly what to say.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “This must have been so hard for you to even tell me but thank you for saying the thing I needed to hear right now.”
He hugged me and he cried with me. At that moment we created a really strong bond. We both lost two really important people in our lives and we were both hurting but we still had each other to hold ourselves up.
It won’t be easy at all but as long as we were together, side by side, it didn’t seem impossible.
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