Snippet

Hey, so I skipped a couple of weeks. I wholeheartedly apologize; it will probably happen again.
Before I get too embarrassed, here's a little snippet of something I've been working on. Bon appetite.

It was not a special day. Not overly sunny morning with birds chirping as a cruel dose of dramatic irony, nor as dark and dismal as a day like that should have been. It was partially cloudy, not quite grey but certainly not bright. I could hear my father watching TV in the living room; a news anchor predicted that the high temperature for the day likely wouldn't peak above 75 degrees. Just an average boring day. 

Maybe that was the irony. That someone so spectacular would pass away on such a dull, unimportant day in a dreary nursing home. She deserved better. 

Up until a few weeks ago, I hadn't seen my grandmother as overly special. Not to say that I didn't love her, but she was a normal grandma. She baked cookies with us, and sometimes made off-color jokes which seemed a bit crass for someone her age, but she was just a sweet, funny old lady. She wasn't confined to polite manners like the other grandparents, and she was so much older because she'd waited so long to have kids, but she wasn't so out there.  

I would still have thought that, as I saw my father cry for the first time in my life, if it hadn't been for the secret she'd left me. The diaries which had led us to late night conversations until nursing home staff told me I had to go home.  

There was a part of me left unconvinced that the events outlined in those old books were true. They seemed real, sure, but the events were insane. Absolutely unbelievable. 

She had given me the journals hardly a month before she died. I would return each day after school to ask her questions on what I'd read since our last meeting. She would clarify, add details, with a fond expression on her face. Even the painful memories were birthed of happier times. 

The day her casket was lowered into the ground, I clutched my bag tightly to my chest. Inside were the leather-bound notebooks with the yellowing pages. Holding her life story in my hands, it should have felt like she was still here with me. They say that carrying a part of the lost loved one with you is supposed to relieve some of the pain, give some comfort. It's all a big lie. 

Tears came and went; the day passed in a haze. Suddenly it was night, and I was laying in my bed. I wasn't sure if hours or minutes had passed, but it was quickly becoming unbearable to remain still in the dark. The emptiness which had plagued me throughout the day closed in on me, crushing my lungs as if anvils had filled my chest. I was truly alone, so lonely without my friend and drowning in the absence of human contact. 

Tripping and stumbling my way to the light switch on the other side of the room, it was all I could do to hold back the sobs. Waking my parents would be too difficult; knowing they could never know the truth about my grandmother, knowing they'd laugh in my face if I tried to tell them, was impossible to cope with even enacting scenarios in my head. Somehow it was almost worse not to tell them. 

I cracked open the first diary, eager for some solace. I could lose myself in the stories, get to know historical figures described with a firsthand account. Tonight I would be meeting a criminal idolized as a Robin Hood during my grandmother's time. And I would wish, not for the last time, that she was here for me to ask my many questions.