The Day I Heard the News

It was sometime in the year 2000. I was in kindergarten, about five years old. It was time for all the parents to round up their kids and haul them off from after-school daycare. My brother and I attended this daycare directly across the street from our elementary school at the time. We had all sorts of activities in which we could partake. We made friends, played games, learned from the daycare staff and our peers, but mostly we just longed to be home and away from the grips of the academic landscape that was school and post-class daycare. We decompressed at home — played with our action figures, plugged in our Nintendo 64, or watched our favorite cartoons on television. That’s what we really looked forward to every day. On a great day, we would congregate with friends in the neighborhood ad pay elaborate, large scale games of tag or cops-and-robbers, or jump on the trampolines at friends’ houses whose parents allowed them to have one. Our parents told us not to jump on them which made us that much more excited to do so. But one day in October, instead of video games, cartoons and trampolines, the rest of our day would turn out to be more memorable than an episode of our favorite cartoon.

That day, my brother, Darvin, and I had no idea that the remainder of our day after daycare would not involve our regularly scheduled after-school activities we were used to. Normally our mother would pick us up from daycare and she would shuttle us back to our house where we would carry on as a family; we would wait for dad to return home from work, eat dinner, have playtime, bathe, brush our teeth, and rest our heads for the night. However, on this day, it was our aunt Janet who picked us up from daycare. I don’t remember thinking anything out of the ordinary about this, but I do remember Janet not being in the greatest of spirits upon picking us up. She knelt down to embrace my brother and I. We felt the slick material of her orange Tennessee sports jacket against our faces and heard the noises it made as it crunched and zipped under the pressure of our group embrace. After the group hug was done and all the way felt out, she walked Darvin and I out the door, and we piled into her car to make the short journey back to our family home.

We entered the house from the garage and made our way into the kitchen. The house was hushed and felt like a completely different place than we were used to. From the kitchen door, we could see our father straight ahead in the living room, sitting wistfully on the big, green couch with his head bowed. Janet ushered us into the living room, softly sitting us down on the couch that was sitting perpendicular to the one upon which our dad was sitting. We sat there in the midst of a different type of air, not knowing the following conversation was one to herald the biggest, most unfortunate news of our short time of existence on this Earth. I sat still and listened. Dad delivered the news straight to us. He ripped off the bandaid. “Your mother. She…she’s gone. Your mother died today.” I remember my response being unnaturally different from what a child would normally do in this scenario. I laughed. I wasn’t fully aware in my little five-year-old brain that this was not the material of a joke. I didn’t know what people did or did not joke about. I didn’t know that people died. I didn’t know that parents died. Before that day, I didn’t know my mother wasn’t going to be with me forever. I was shocked and I was scared. Hell, I still — to this day — laugh at things I shouldn’t laugh at when I’m nervous. That day was the start of an entire life of existing with a missing piece for all of us — Darvin, my father, and myself.

It seemed like life never really missed a beat after this, though. Maybe I was so young that, looking back on it now, I can’t fill in the gaps that remain blank in my mind. Perhaps a lot did happen in the time between her passing and dad marrying our step-mother, Robin. Either way, I didn’t go long in life without a mother figure. Dad married Robin, and life continued to go on almost seamlessly. Robin had two boys she brought to the family. We all grew up together and did things that brothers normally do.

Dad never really told us what happened. He still hasn’t divulged the whole thing. I don’t know exactly how my mother died. He’s told me brief notes on the subject. He told me one day that I favor a lot of her mental attributes. That she struggled with depression and some substance abuse here and there. He told me he’s still not sure if she took her own life or not. I also remember hearing that she had double pneumonia when she passed. Apparently they found her at one of the the buildings that the family business owned. I don’t know the state they found her in.

I hardly remember the funeral. I remember dad sitting in the room right outside the sanctuary in which the service was being held. He was sitting there exactly how he had been sitting that day we came home to a somber return from daycare with our aunt Janet. He seemed lost. I remember sitting down for the service in the front row. All the words from the preacher’s mouth flew over my tiny head like airplanes in the sky that look like little specks from the ground, but you know they are in fact immense and heavy up close. I had somewhat of a runny nose, and I would try to hide my sniffles because for some reason I felt embarrassed by the fact that somebody might think I was crying. I don’t know why I felt that way. I had every reason to cry.

I’m twenty-six years old now, and those are practically the only memories I have from those years of my life. That’s not incredibly out of line, though. I’m sure most people don’t remember much from when they were five or six years old. I still don’t know the entirety of what happened. I’ve been through a lot since then. I’ve been through friendships that met their ends, loves that came and went. I’ve had days of bliss and periods of unadulterated happiness. I’ve had pain and sorrow and more loss since then. I saw the evolution — from start to finish — of a crippling drug addiction for myself. I saw the same disease kill my best friend Austin. I saw my papaw’s lifeless body in his bedroom among the rest of the entire family just hours after he had passed. I’ve found a pregnant girlfriend of mine overdosed in her bathroom, gray and cold on Valentines day. I’ve overdosed myself and been revived. I’ve wished I was dead since then. I’ve harmed myself intentionally many times since she left this world. Through everything I experience in my life, I find myself wondering if I’m like her. I wonder what she would think if she could see me today. I wonder what she was doing right before she died.