I Was A Terrible Son

My mother was all I had in this world. It has been two weeks and I

I walked away feeling like I was a complete failure and that I didn’t deserve to go on. On the way home my mother tried to talk to me, but, I put on my headphones and cried silently. Once we were home my father asked how it went. The tears that were in my eyes and they became more evident as my shoulders and chest were shaking and trembling. The only sound in the room was the sound of me crying and wailing. I started crumbling and falling to the ground and my mother and father rushed to my side. They held me until the tears came to a stop and a little bit afterwards

I sat on the stairs with tears streaming down my face. I look up, sobbing as I wipe the snot from my nose. “This is goodbye for now, but I promise I will see you soon”, my dad had said as he held me. I grabbed onto my dad’s shirt as he tried to put me back down on the stairs and I felt as if my whole world came crashing down. Growing up with divorced parents was a challenge, but it has changed me drastically and for the better. I had to take care of my younger brother during the divorce, which made our relationship stronger and would mature me more than I would ever actually realize.

I came home one day to see both of my parents sad. As a third grader, I didn’t completely understand at the time, but my father had been laid off from the job he’d had since his teenage years. My father had started at the age of eighteen as a student worker at Southern Miss, and after years of hard work he had been promoted to the manager of shipping and receiving on campus. When the recession struck, the need to save money resulted in his position being terminated. My father was without a job. My father loved that job and when he lost it, he changed. He found a new love, alcohol. He let his love for alcohol become an addiction. He would do anything for alcohol; he even had secret stashes when my mom had removed all the prior alcohol from the house. Quickly my father became a violent drunk and began to routinely beat my mother and me. He became unstoppable; no person could get him back on track so my mother, in an attempt to keep me safe, removed him from the house. Even my mother’s best efforts weren’t always enough, as my father constantly broke into our house. One day my mother and I came home and my father was waiting in our den with a gun. We walked in, he pointed the gun at us, and then back at himself. He couldn’t decide to kill my mother, himself, or just all of us. He had more hatred in his eyes

When I woke up in the morning, my mom had left for work. My dad was singing in the kitchen, banging pots around. I got up, tiptoed down the hall, washed my face. A neatly wrapped present lay on the bathroom counter. It was addressed to me. I stuffed it into my robe pocket, and rushed back down the hall. Under the covers, I opened the package. On the first page of a small, leather notebook, an inscription read: to a writer, love your mother. I never wrote anything in the notebook. I could never think of anything good

Although her death was a tragedy, it made me realize that this is the only life I will ever have, and I need to embrace every aspect of it and not take one millisecond of it for

She told stories that began to have new meaning when she told them for the last time. They felt deeper and drive themselves further into my heart where they still reside. Nana then went on to explain how she was sick of fighting and her one wish was for us to just let her go peacefully. At the time I was so angered by her selfishness. How could she give up when my aunt had another baby on the way. A baby that would never know her grandmother. A baby who would never know the warmth of her hugs. I begged her to stay. I cried at her side begging her to stay so we could make more memories like the ones that she had just told. She refused and told me to stay strong with a smile that I took the wrong way. I was so angry at her. How could she abandon her family? How could she be so greedy to do this? I told her I loved her and walked out of the room in a rage and when I got to the hallway I collapsed in an immense rush of emotions. This competes for the lowest part of my life. I sobbed on the floor and didn’t care who saw me or when a kind nurse tried to help me up. I was frozen in anguish as my mind tried to figure out what was happening. If I had known

I heard a feminine voice call out to me as I blazed out the front door. "Good morning Amber! Oh, where are you--" I cut her off with a sharp slam. I couldn't look back. With each step towards my car, I inhale painful sobs of air. I feel as if I don't know who I am, as if I was that 18 year old girl hearing the news of his death for the first time. I couldn't think of the name that belongs to me, or any one else but my father. Any face my subconscious offers had the resonance of a total stranger, then was replaced with the haunting image of

I jumped out of my bed like a missile and looked out the window so fast that I almost hit my head in the window. I watched all the cars that was passing by. My uncle came to my room and asked me “what is happing here?” he looked at my calendar it was Saturday the day that my dad comes back. “Jonny, I have to talk to you” I looked at him and walked on my bed towers him. He sat on my bed and explained to me that my dad had lied to me that he’ll come back because that sound that I heard at night was your dad fighting with your mom for me, she herds that my dad was mad at me just for a slice of bread so my parents divorced. I looked at my uncle’s eyes, my heart almost stopped, tears slide down my face. I was in my room crying for my dad to come back for 2 hours. Nothing was the same without my dad. When I came back home from school, I cried “I’m here dad … oh” I was alone with my uncle. All the paintings that me and dad were on my wall, I used my step stole to take down the pictures and put it in a shoebox. I could not believe that he abandon me…by a

We walk back to the shelters to get some sleep, and I sit there awake for a minute until my father falls asleep. In the morning when I awake, my father is very sick, so I take him to the doctor. The doctor rejects to help because he is a surgeon. I take my father back to the shelter to let him rest some more. I leave him to go outside to get more coffee. I think back to all the things me and my father have been through. Losing my mother and sister will always reply through my head, remembering them holding hands and moving off to the left, and my father holding onto my hand, and we walking away from them. The last thing I got to do was just look into there eyes and turn and walk away. Once I got back I found my father not there. I knew where he had gone, they had taken him to the furnace. I dropped to the floor wanting to cry, wanting to have a fit like a normal teenager. Deep into his feelings he thought “Free at last.” He was free to only think about surviving, and not to worry about anyone but himself. I will miss my father. I love him. I will never forget how much he did for me, he is the reason why I am still

It was the afternoon of my 7th birthday when it happened. We were out at our favorite park in Brooklyn, the weather was nice, and everything seemed fine, except for one thing; my father wasn’t sober. It was the first time my father had ever brought a bottle with him on one of our birthdays. I never found out what caused him to find the need to take a swig, but ever since breakfast that morning, the smell of alcohol had gotten stronger on his breath. My mother complained about it, and one thing led to another and he slapped her in the face. But instead of yelling or crying, my mother turned to Maggie and me, said she was sorry one final time, and jumped off the beautiful park bridge, falling into the rock filled river below. In that moment, I realized at once why she had kept apologizing to us; she knew that if she was ever going to escape my father’s torture, she was going to have to leave

I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.

“It’s going to be fine,” that's all I hear from the lady sitting next to me as I am crying and looking out the window as the house I was first brought home to grows smaller and smaller. I turned around and cried not knowing what was going on and why I was being taken from my home. The lady next to me began to comfort me and held me close while I cried. I didn’t know her or the other people that were with her and I was scared. I had no idea where we were going and I had no idea where my brothers or sister were. We drove for about half an hour and then we pulled into a big parking lot and stopped. We all got out and they led me into a large building that smelled like winterfresh air fresheners. The sound of crying and laughing filled the air while kids and

I thought about what it would have been like had she passed away and the negative

I unbuckled my car seat and leaned forward to see my mother’s tear stricken face. I had never seen my mother cry with such sincerity. Her mascara streaking down her cheeks, creating canals of charcoal grime that tarnished her otherwise flawless face. Her breath seemed to catch in her throat as she attempted to talk through another sob. The sight of her pulled me back to only minutes earlier when