Sometimes\u00a0when I closed my eyes, I would only see her. There was nothing but emptiness in my mind,\u00a0a cold and desolate vacuum extracting all that was vibrant,\u00a0yet\u00a0still I\u00a0anchored\u00a0her\u00a0face\u00a0secured. Trapped. She filled\u00a0the void with her obnoxious laugh and dramatic flair.\u00a0She was the sun in a dark room that failed to\u00a0shelter itself from the light. And\u00a0while she\u00a0lived\u00a0there, alone in my thoughts, she was still a blurry figure of secrets never to\u00a0be\u00a0uncovered.<\/p>\n
I opened my eyes to\u00a0look upon her\u00a0\u2013\u00a0a paralyzed body\u00a0dressed in\u00a0graceless\u00a0modesty.\u00a0She lay in a bed of white, only half of her petite figure shown off, framed\u00a0like art in a museum. I stood beside her, a statue guarding over a coffin with a line of people waiting to view her, examine her, pray over her. They\u00a0whispered low in the\u00a0quiet room, careful of their word choice and their audience.\u00a0Careful of what I might hear.<\/p>\n
It was strange.\u00a0No one ever\u00a0really looked\u00a0the same in their deathbed as they did alive, yet somehow her color\u00a0was animated,\u00a0lively \u2013\u00a0like at any moment she would just blink and\u00a0arise.\u00a0Knowing her,\u00a0it was all some\u00a0sort\u00a0of\u00a0prank and she would jump out any minute to see who fell for\u00a0the\u00a0trick.\u00a0I imagined her smile, wide with assurance that she fooled everyone in the room, convincing them that she truly died.\u00a0I\u00a0almost wished for it.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe sure was a beauty.\u201d I didn\u2019t know who spoke. I didn\u2019t know a lot of the people who came, in all honesty. Most of my friends\u00a0had already left. Something about funerals being too depressing,\u00a0someone\u00a0had said. At least\u00a0they\u00a0could turn it off\u00a0eventually. She wasn\u2019t\u00a0their\u00a0sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know how hard this must be for you. For all of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t move.\u00a0I focused on her eyelids and\u00a0remained silent. They\u00a0walked away.<\/p>\n
I inhaled a deep breath, waiting for her chest to bulk up like mine. I waited for her eyes to blink or wink or for her to spit out a silly joke or complain about how I always got her in trouble whenever she played her music too loud or woke me up in the middle of the night talking with a new guy on the phone every other weekend. I waited for her to stop playing with me and just breathe already.<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t. But I did. I tried not\u00a0to, but\u00a0couldn\u2019t hold it in longer than a minute. I tried for two, but still failed. If I could, I\u2019d give her every breath\u00a0I had left.<\/p>\n
People came and went, most of them spewing out rehearsed apologies and fond memories. I drowned them out as I emptied my lungs and\u00a0counted the seconds that we were the same. No breath. No movement. No life.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvelyn, the service is about to start.\u201d<\/p>\n
No life.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to sit down.\u201d<\/p>\n
She wasn\u2019t gone. She was here, she was just playing a cruel joke. A real fucking cruel joke. I just needed to see her wake up. I knew she would. She had to.<\/p>\n
Zoe wouldn\u2019t leave like this.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvelyn, don\u2019t do this today.\u201d<\/p>\n
I ran. I didn\u2019t care where I was going, but I couldn\u2019t be in there with everyone apologizing for something that wasn\u2019t worth apologizing for. She did this to herself. It was her fault.\u00a0She left me with a lifetime of questions and nothing to erase the pain.<\/p>\n
Why did you do it<\/i>?<\/i><\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t you care about\u00a0<\/i>me<\/i>?\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
How could you not talk to your own sister?<\/i><\/p>\n
Why did<\/i>n\u2019t you take me with you?<\/i><\/p>\n
Didn\u2019t you know you could have killed me, too?<\/i><\/p>\n
I stopped running.\u00a0Silence \u2013\u00a0in my mind and all around me. She\u2019d never answer the\u00a0questions that consumed me.\u00a0Though\u00a0I guess even in death she\u00a0was still a mystery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Katie Stelter Sometimes\u00a0when I closed my eyes, I would only see her. There was nothing but emptiness in my mind,\u00a0a cold and desolate vacuum extracting all that was vibrant,\u00a0yet\u00a0still I\u00a0anchored\u00a0her\u00a0face\u00a0secured. Trapped. She filled\u00a0the void with her obnoxious laugh and dramatic flair.\u00a0She was the sun in a dark room that failed to\u00a0shelter itself from the light.… Continue Reading Even in Death<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-228","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/228\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/euphemism.illinoisstate.edu\/14-1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}