Counting down the days is the only thing that keeps me sane anymore. As long as they don't pull into one mush of emptiness in my mind, I can pretend some form of sanity still remains. Counting the second, the minutes, the hours. Counting the time till I have to wake again, pull myself out of the warm emptiness I find sollitude in and start the day. Thirty six days, five hours and forty three minutes. That's how long it's been since he died.
Someone once told me there was a heaven and a god that gave and took life. That person was a fool, their mind corrupted by the lies of preachers who behind closed doors comit sins of pure evil. If there was a single glorified being, a one of all knowledge and all power a god of "love", then why is there death? would an all powerful all loving God not love us enough to save us from this hollow feeling the fills my mind now? Would he not think me important enough to keep those I love, rather scattering his ashes to the earth by way of mockery for my sins?
Thirty six days, five hours and fifty eight minutes. I can hear Ben playing with his toy cars in the kitchen, the scrape of the toy wheels like that of fingernails on a wall. The day of the funeral, Ben asked me when we'd be waking him up. I didn't even have the courage to silence him. I simply turned my back on the dark procession and ran. I must have lost my shoes as I ran because I remember Nanny returning them to me later that week. I ran away from the coffin, away from the black hole threatening to engulf me. I know what they say about me now, the crazed widow, not fit to care for the child, mad. My feet were bleeding when I got to my front door. But I didn't notice till I saw the bloody footprints staining the tiled floors. They found me moping the floors with a mop soaked in blood, unable to erase his footprints. His footprints? Were they his? It must have been, for I dream in nightmares of the same bloody footprints when he approaches my bedside, pale white skin drained of life. I dream of his blue lips parting to release the hiss, like wind in a tree.
Ben is calling me. He's lost me. I've lost me. Where am I? Am I a ghost, forever sentenced to float this earth alone? They took him, why not Ben and Nanny? Why not take every living soul until all that is left is my empty heart, alone, broken, unfit for the afterlife?
After fifteen days, the motions became mechanical. I didn't have all our pain lies, is it not? Is it not in memories we cry, in thoughts that we find sorrow? Is it not our minda that capture every dagger of grief, letting it grow into the monster that over throws us? After fifteen days, I didn't let myself think anymore. I stopped crying at night, I stopped breaking down. I stopped knowing. I simply started counting.
Ben sounds scared now. His whimpers have become shouts, calling me, calling me. Call me by a name I barly remember to be my own. My son is calling me, so I must answer. He knows no pain, he lives no sorrow. My son is a pure flame not yet silenced by the world.
Thirty seven days, three hours and five minutes. They find me rocking my cold white son on the kitchen floor, clotted blood darkening the soles of his feet.
