Mom was driving Dad’s car on a sunny day in late August when we pulled up in front of a white New England house with a porch. We leaned forward with our heads turned, checking the place out.
According to the pink piece of paper that I’d gotten in the mail, this was where I would live now. It was my first day at Amherst College.
The thing that was missing, though, was Dad. It was ten months now, since he died all of a sudden. A heart attack, and then he was gone.
Mom and I got out of the car and went inside. My room was on the first floor and it had a bay window and a skinny twin bed.
“This is nice,” I said.
We carried in bags and boxes.
A couple of my dorm mates came to introduce themselves, but right away I felt that I wasn’t going to be friends with them.
Mom and I finished bringing in the things. I thought there was no need for us to have an emotional goodbye. Hadn’t we cried enough? And anyway our house was only thirty minutes away. That was a major reason I’d decided to come to school here, to be close to Mom. Since my brother was back at college now, Mom would be alone. I wanted to be close by.
Still, there was the jumpy nervousness in saying goodbye to her. Suddenly I lived here at college, and just thinking about it brought on a crushing loneliness.
I tried not to think about how no one here knew the story that had led up to this moment. Why it was just Mom and me here today, without Dad. I hated the fact that no one knew. I didn’t want to have to tell my story. I just wanted people to know, and to understand.
I wanted people to know that I was changed from who I’d been before It happened. Before It happened, I used to think there were certain things you could count on. I thought certain things were for…certain. I thought that my parents would be around, for instance, and that I could count on that. And in general I thought that the people I knew and loved would live a long time so that we could be together.
But apparently that wasn’t certain at all.
And what really bothered me was that everyone else still took things for granted. Everyone else kept right on assuming that life was guaranteed. Little did they know.
Mattea Kramer writes about loss at the blog thislifeafterloss.com. Follow her on Twitter.
Image: WeHeartIt
