Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff

  My river of tears for him still floods every so often. I know this river will go on forever and never dry out, just as my love and memories of my dad will never dry up either. They will last forever, just like his spirit.

  My time has come,

  And so I’m gone.

  To a better place,

  Far beyond.

  I love you all

  As you can see.

  But it’s better now,

  Because I’m free . . .

  Traci Kornhauser

  Our Song

  What is there to do when people die—people so dear and rare—but bring them back by remembering?

  May Sarton

  You asked me to sing to you. I complained, “Aw, Mom, I’ll wake people up.” Once again, I let my ever-present stage fright come before you. Looking back, it’s hard to believe I was so selfish. But you persisted, and eventually I caved.

  I sang our favorites—Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt and Bette Midler. My voice was quiet and hushed, commensurate with the dim light in the room. I made sure the sound didn’t penetrate the walls. You listened with your eyes closed, then thanked me and told me how lovely and peaceful it was.

  When we brought you home that last week in January, I would sit with you in the evenings. I read to you from The Tragedy of Richard the Third, knowing it was your favorite. Of course, I made sarcastic comments along the way. “Lady Anne was the biggest idiot in the world.” My eyes searched yours for a response, hoping they would open and smile at my glib attempts.

  I read you poetry from Robbie Burns and Walt Whitman, and rubbed lotion on your hands. Finally, I worked up the courage to sing to you again. You weren’t able to ask me this time. Grandma peeked through the door and gave us a tearful smile. I stopped. “Keep singing to your mother,” she said. When I finished Dad asked me, “Would you sing at the memorial service?” You were lying right beside me, and suddenly it seemed so perverse to have this conversation in front of you. “I don’t know if I can. I’ll try.” We didn’t speak of it again.

  That Saturday, after you were gone, I went home and practiced. I needed you to hear me one last time, beautiful and unblemished.

  And then there I was, standing at the podium. I didn’t tell anyone what was planned in case I chickened out. While the minister told me when to come up during the service, Shirley, who was giving the eulogy, asked, “But what if someone stands up before Jennifer?” I shot back, “Well, now—they’ll just have to wait, won’t they?” She laughed, “You are just like your mother.” I smiled and thanked her for the compliment.

  My hands shook as I faced the microphone. I spoke a few words to gather my courage and compose myself. Then, very quietly, I sang “Somewhere over the Rainbow.”

  I thought back to when I was a little girl. You would call me on the phone during one of your trips to watch The Wizard of Oz with me on TV. Miles apart and racking up the long distance charges, we would both squeal during the tornado scene. We sang duets, and trios when Ashlea rode in the car with us. It was our song.

  I finished the last line, “If happy little bluebirds fly, beyond the rainbow, why oh why can’t I?” Then I whispered, “Mom, you have beautiful wings now. May they take you wherever you want to go. . . .”

  At least a hundred people witnessed the most difficult moment of my life, but only one person mattered. Of course I will sing for you, Mom. Feel free to ask me anytime.

  Jennifer Dalrymple-Mozisek

  It’s Been a While

  It’s been a while since I’ve heard your voice,

  That warm comforting voice,

  Always uttering helpful words of wisdom.

  You always knew so much more about life than I,

  Teaching me day by day.

  You watched me grow into a woman,

  Always supporting me no matter what.

  You were proud of what I was becoming,

  Loving me endlessly without question, never judging.

  While you were watching me mature into the person I am

  today,

  I was watching you struggle to stay alive.

  You said over and over that everything would end up all

  right in the end.

  You always knew just what to say to make the world seem

  like it was on our side.

  You were wrong this time, Mom—

  The world wasn’t on our side.

  It took you away from me,

  Leaving me alone, longing for your love, motherless.

  Without someone to tell me I was beautiful,

  To wipe my tears away as they rolled down my cheek,

  Without someone to share my fears, my joys and my

  triumphs.

  I heard your voice again last night.

  I’ve missed it every day since you’ve been gone.

  I saw your smile again last night,

  I’ve been wishing for it every hour since you’ve been away.

  In my dream you said

  You’d always be near

  And now that I think of it,

  You said the same thing

  The day you died.

  You always did know just what to say

  To make the world seem like it

  Was on our side.

  Catherine Starr

  Reaching Mom

  It wasn’t always just my mom and me. There was a time when my dad was in the picture, but that was such a long time ago. It may as well have been in another lifetime. I don’t remember much about him. When I try to form a picture of him in my mind, all I get is a hazy image of a tall man with dark hair. And though it’s hard to tell, I think he’s smiling. We don’t talk about him, though. Anything about my dad is taboo. I don’t know how I know that. I just know it. It’s this unspoken rule that my mother made and I’ve just always obeyed. But I have a feeling he was a good man. Just conjuring up that picture of him makes me feel a bit safer. She never spoke of him. Not since it happened. I think she blames herself.

  The details are difficult. I remember all the wrong parts. I was so young. Was I about four when it happened? That sounds right for some reason. I had just turned four. My birthday was a few days before it happened. I think that’s why my mom always seems sad around the time of my birthday. But she hides it. Says it’s the time of year; says that her eyes are watery because of all the pollen in the air. That’s what she always said. But I can hear her sometimes in the middle of the night. Tiny, suppressed sobs coming from her room.

  It was springtime. A cool day, I remember, because my mom struggled to get me to zip up my jacket. I hated how the zipper cut into my neck. It was morning. I remember the smell of the dew as we walked from the house to the car. I remember the long gulps of air I took, as if to drink it in. To this day, I find myself holding my breath sometimes, on spring mornings, waiting for the bus at the end of my driveway.

  I don’t remember where we were going, but I knew that wherever it was, we were going to meet daddy there. And that made me happy. A light drizzle started as we got on the road. I would watch the little droplets of rain as they landed at the top of the window and follow them as they became tinier and tinier and finally disappeared as they reached the bottom. It was a game I used to play, and still find myself playing when my mind wanders off on long car rides.

  The droplets got bigger and bigger until it became a full-fledged storm, cascading down on the car until finally my eyes became all confused. That’s when my mother started getting this strange look on her face. A determined look, eyes squinting into the fog. Trying desperately to see around each drop of rain. And her knuckles were white as she gripped the steering wheel. I remember balling up my own little fists to see if they would do the same thing. Turn white. Just as I was studying the way little mountains of bone formed and disappeared as I clenched and unclenched my fists, there was a shrieking sound. The car braked and I was pushed forward, just about hitting my head on the dash. My mom threw open the car door and ran outside screaming.
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  The next thing I remember was sitting on the sofa at my Aunt Rosa’s house. Aunt Rosa was by my side explaining something to me, but I couldn’t understand the words. They didn’t mean anything. They were just a jumble of sounds put together, and I started laughing at how funny she sounded. She held her head in her hands and her whole body shook. I tried to explain to her what was so funny. But she just cried. So I shut my mouth.

  And once more it becomes hazy.

  It’s funny how I can remember the events leading up to the accident with such amazing clarity, but I don’t remember much about the time after it happened at all. I mean, I can remember pieces: feelings, colors, images. But nothing that tells a story.

  There was a lot of black. I can see people crying and my mother sitting on the couch surrounded by people I knew to be her friends. The woman sitting next to her was her best friend Carmen. She sat holding Mom’s hand. A helpless look upon her face. I remember wanting more than anything to see my dad, but I kept telling myself that he was away on business and would come back soon, like he always did.

  Soon the colors started getting brighter. People weren’t always crying. And we started doing the things we normally did. But it wasn’t like before. Mom always looked like she was far away. I’d sing to her, dance for her, play with her hair—anything to try and get her to smile at me the way she used to. Anything to get more than just a pat on the head and that faraway smile. I just couldn’t reach her.

  It’s been that way ever since.

  Since then I’ve gleaned bits of conversations and can sort of piece together what happened. I mean, I knew my dad died in a car accident. But I also knew that there was more to it than that. We had been on our way to pick him up at the airport. He was away on business. He went away a lot, I remember. But we were running late because of the rain traffic. We got there just in time to see the accident.

  My dad leaning out into the street, hailing a cab. Waving for a taxi. And as the taxi tried to stop for him, it skidded and ran up onto the sidewalk. Hitting him. Killing my father on impact, they said. And my mom saw the whole thing happen.

  He must’ve thought we forgot about him, since we were pretty late. And so he would have to find his own way home.

  Just then we pulled up.

  It was raining too hard. The street was too wet. The taxi’s brakes were in need of a tune-up. So many factors figured into his death. But my mom blamed only herself.

  So really my whole life has been tinged with this unspoken sadness.

  My mom’s still distant. Years and years have passed. I’m about to go off to college. And still, she’s in her own prison to which only she holds the key. It’s been just her and me for so long, you’d have thought that maybe we’d have formed some sort of bond. Just the two of us. Facing the world together. But no. She’s in her corner and I’m in mine. There’ve been times when I’ve tried to reach out, like I did when I was little. Times when I’d try and get her to open up to me by opening up to her. But there’s just no doing.

  That’s not to say she’s been a bad mother. She’s always provided me with what I needed, working long hours just so I could have the luxuries a kid with two parents has. She’s been a good mom.

  And now it’s time for me to go.

  We’re on our way upstate to school. Most of my belongings are packed in the back of our van. Mom’s driving and I’m listening to the newest Counting Crows album. It’s raining, and I’m watching the droplets of water race to the bottom of the window. I feel like it’s my last chance. It’s now or never. And so I say it.

  “Dad would’ve been proud of me, don’tcha think? Going off to college? All grown up?”

  Except it comes out more like, “Dadwould’vebeenproud ofmedon’tchathink?goingofftocollege?allgrownup?”

  School’s pretty far upstate. At this point, we’re almost there. Driving along what seems like an endless stretch of deserted road. So when the car jerks to a stop, we’re in no danger of an accident.

  My mother turns to me slowly, with tears running down her face. But she’s smiling. At first she just stares into my eyes and I’m amazed at how “present” she is. She takes my hand in hers and says, “Yes, honey. Daddy would’ve been so proud.” And suddenly I realized that I’d never had time to grieve over the loss of my father. I’d spent my whole life grieving over the loss of my mom. Somehow losing her was worse than losing my father, because she was still with me. But an empty shell of a person. She’s here now. She’s with me. That’s what matters. And she exudes this warmth. This warmth that I’ve felt before, but not for a very long time. And suddenly I’m crying, too. Not because I miss my dad and wish he were here with me, but because, finally, after all this time, she’s ready to come back to life.

  Analise Antone

  [EDITORS’ NOTE: This story is not entirely factual. Some aspects have been fictionalized.]

  4

  SUICIDE

  Often the test of courage is not to die but to live.

  Vittorio Alfieri

  I Never Knew

  The difference between holding on to a hurt or releasing it with forgiveness is like the difference between laying your head down at night on a pillow filled with thorns or a pillow filled with rose petals.

  Loren Fischer

  She was my best friend, and I loved her. She was the coolest girl in junior high and everyone wanted to be like her . . . and she chose me to be her best friend. Her name was Cindy. She was beautiful with her black hair and tall, thin body. While the rest of us in eighth and ninth grade were still looking amorphous, trying to take shape, Cindy was already beautifully poised in her adult body.

  Her mother had died when she was a little girl. She was an only child, and she lived alone with her father. By the time we would get home from school every day, he would already be at work. He wouldn’t come home until two or three in the morning, so we had free reign of the house. No parental supervision was the greatest thing we could ask for as teenagers. Her house was a big, two-story that was concealed by a large grove of orange trees. You couldn’t see the house from the street, and we liked it that way. It added to the mystique and allure that we were always trying to create.

  At school she was pretty much the center of attention. One whole corner of the quad was dedicated to Cindy and her “followers.” If there was new music, clothes, hairstyles or even new ways to take notes or study, you could be fairly sure that it came out of that corner of the quad. Even the school faculty caught on to the power this girl held and convinced her to run for class president. Cindy and I were voted in as class president and vice president by a landslide.

  By day, we were the acting liaison between students and faculty; by night, we hosted social activities at Cindy’s house. If we weren’t having a party, people would come just to hang out. Kids would be there for all kinds of reasons—to talk about relationships, their parents, to do their homework, or just because they knew someone they liked would be showing up.

  After everyone left, I would usually spend the night. My mom wouldn’t like it very much if it was a school night. Sometimes Cindy would come back to my house to spend the night, but my mom didn’t like that much either because we would stay up all night laughing and talking. Cindy didn’t like to be home alone.

  That following summer, after I came home from vacation with my family, things were starting to change. Cindy looked thinner than usual with dark circles under her eyes, and she had started to smoke. The strikingly beautiful girl looked pale and gaunt. She said she missed me a lot. While it was a boost to my ego, I couldn’t believe it could be entirely true. After all, there were always people trying to be close to her and get into her circle of friends.

  My solution: two weeks at the beach. Our parents pitched in to rent a beach house for two weeks. My mom would be the only supervision. In Cindy’s inimitable style, we collected a group of beach friends within a couple of days. We’d all hang out at this local café during the day, when we were not in the water or on the sa
nd, and at night we’d hang out around this fire pit on the beach.

  Cindy started to look like her old self, but better. She was tan. She looked great in a bikini, and all the guys on the beach wanted to be around her. But she was still smoking. She told me it calmed her nerves.

  One night, Cindy came back to the beach house very late. She was all disoriented and noticeably excited. She told me she and this one guy had been drinking and smoking marijuana, and they had gotten together. She said that I had to try marijuana because it made everything better, clearer, in fact. She said she really liked this guy and wanted to run away with him. I knew she was just high, and she’d feel differently in the morning.

  When school started that next year, things weren’t the same, and I missed the old routine. Cindy wanted to get into different things than I wanted, and she started hanging around guys more and more. We would still hang out from time to time, but it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. Cindy would get really serious and tell me that I just didn’t understand how things were. I just thought that she was maturing faster emotionally than the rest of us, like she had physically.

  One morning when I arrived at school, there were police cars all around and a lot of nervous activity in the halls. When I proceeded toward my locker, my counselor and another woman stopped me. I was asked to follow them to the office. My heart was pounding so fast and hard that I could hardly catch my breath. My head was racing with the different scenarios that might have caused this odd behavior.

  When we all sat down in my counselor’s office, the principal came in and took a seat. Was I in some kind of trouble? The principal began by talking about life and maturity and circumstances. Now my head was really spinning. What was he trying to say? And then my world froze in time with the words, “. . . and Cindy took her own life last night using her father’s gun.” I couldn’t talk; I couldn’t move. Tears started streaming from my eyes before my heart could even comprehend the pain. She was only fifteen years old.