Excerpt from Memoir

I have been working on this for months, am making some progress... can share a bit here.

Some things are vague, some things are vivid. “Was there water in the tub?” the officer asked the air. He wasn’t looking at anyone, just writing. “Maybe we should give her a sedative, she’s going to snap,” I could hear Johnny saying, “you know, something to calm her down?” His worry was on my sister, Karen, as she paced inside the bedroom, from wall to wall to wall to wall, wailing. I heard him say, “Melissa doesn’t even know she’s gone.”

I am Melissa, and I thought she was asleep and probably very, very sick. I didn’t understand yet that this had been building up over of months of crying out. She did things. Half-hearted attempts. No one had ever talked to me about death, so I had no idea what it meant. I felt like I suddenly didn’t know anyone around me, like my mother was a stranger, a woman I didn’t know. My sister was a screaming girl I had never seen before. All the grown-ups in my house were strangers. I was lost.

©2010 M Kyle Hollingsworth