Deathday.

Closing the front door behind me, I walk past the dining room and notice that a low lamp is lit; illuminating the large portrait of Kristina's Memorial.  I walk a couple of steps more only to realize something...

I check my phone.

September 13th.  2010.

Oh God.  Is it...it's her birthday today.

I notice two burnt out candles on the counter, " 1 7 " cut outs.  No cake to be found, but I know my parents had a small traditional cake for her.  I know they blew out the candles.  I know they remembered. 

Part of me wants to scream "WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU CELEBRATING HER BIRTHDAY IF SHE'S FUCKING DEAD?"  

Part of me just wants to sit in front of her ashes and cry like a little kid.

Part of me looks away.

I've already cried.  I've already yelled.  I've already grieved.   But there's a pain that will never leave me for as long as I live.  Something so horrid and dreadful, all hope seems to vanquish in essence of each thought.  The thought that she died.  The hard God damn reality that her heart has stopped beating.  That her flesh has turned to ashes.  That her smile has been destroyed.  That her laugh has been extinguished.

That my little sister is dead.  

I lean over the door frame as I ask my father

"So...how old would she be today?"
"She would be seventeen." 

Seventeen.  Oh my God.  She would be a senior right now.  Enjoying her last fucking year of high school.  But she never made it to high school.  No.  She died an 8th grader.  She'll never know what it's like...what anything is like...

What's the fucking point of saying how old she would be?  She will never age now.  She will never grow older.  She will always be the same 14 year old little girl as I've always remembered her to be.  She will never graduate high school.  She will never go to college.  She will never have a career, or a guy who would love and care for her, or have kids, or be a mother, or a grand mother, or anything. 

She's just dead.

It feels as if my insides have hollowed.  It feels as if the devil is gripping my heart with his cold hands and continuously wrenching at it.  I feel as if the sun will never rise.  That joy will never come.  That my life should end right now.  I feel that I could bury myself in the darkest pit and sit there, waiting for the hollow screams to stop, for the pain to burn until it has nothing else to consume, for the lost times, the regrets, and all to just....stop.

I have so much regret it will literally eat at me until surely I'll turn black on the inside.  As black as her ashes lay now, inside a box in our living room.  Why the fuck did she have to die..?

Why couldn't it be me..?

Why did that wonderful little girl have to suffer such a tragedy?  I can't even hold my breath for 2 fucking minutes and she had a gripping embrace on her windpipe, with immense strain and pressure twisting at her neck, suffocating the life, suffocating hope, destroying part of my life.  destroying a part of me.

I remember walking into her room late at night and waking her up.  We'd talk for hours, sneak around the house and play video games or microwave t.v dinners at 4AM in the morning; laughing about the stupidest shit.  She'd talk about her problems and I'd talk about mine.  I could talk to her about anything.

I remember about a month before her death, I asked God if he could give me a friend I could talk to anything about.

A month later she dies; a twisted point God makes to spit at me, shaming me into taking her for granted.

Well thank you God, I sure fucking appreciate her now.

And it makes me think....

Could I ever have realized how special Kristina was if she never died?  Could I have realized how much I loved her--how much of a true friend she was to me--if she never died?  Could I even grasp how much of a kind and caring spirit she was if she were alive today? 

Maybe not.

A sick possibility....no....

If she never died, she would never have lived.  She would never have changed my life the way she did.  She would never have made me think twice.  Her death exemplified her life.  It made her life whole.  It made her who she was to me.  It defined her in a way that life could not possibly have convinced me otherwise.

Death made her beautiful. 


And now a part of me says "Will, you're just a twisted fuck.  How can death make anyone beautiful?"

...Perhaps, it is the impermanence of such beauty itself that makes it so.  That makes it special.

How can anything be special if it can never be lost?