5. Chapter 5

Benjamin

“Dumb fucking drunk” I mumble, looking down at my sorry excuse of a father. All he does anymore is drink and sleep. The money we got when my mom died is all that’s keeping a roof over our heads.

She’s been dead for a little over four years now. I know it sounds terrible, beyond terrible really, but I’m happy she died. Not because she was a bad person, but because she is no longer abused by my father. She would always have bruises on her arms and on her neck. She would come out of her bedroom with damp cheeks. She died from Huntington’s disease. There’s no treatment to stop or reverse it, so all we could do is sit there and watch her die. You would expect my father to stop hitting her after we found out she was dying. But that made it all the worse. She would always say she was a waste of space. He would always threaten to leave her, and she was too out of it to realize that would be best. I had been 13 when she died. My aunt payed for the funeral. My father was too busy getting drunk to attend it. I remember forcing myself to see her one last time. I remember bawling my eyes out every time I looked at her cold, still body. I remember my aunt grabbing me by the arm and pulling me outside.

-FOUR YEARS AGO-

“Don't.” My aunt had said after I walked past my mother’s cold dead body for what felt like the hundredth time today. She dragged me outside by the arm. “I know you miss her but you've got to stop torturing yourself Ben.” She wipes my tear-stained cheeks and looks down at me with an overbearing amount of sympathy in her eyes.

I drop to my knees and put my face in my hands. “She’s gone!” I yell through the tears. “She won’t see me do anything with my life!”

“Ben, she got to see you grow up into an amazing young man. She will be watching over you. Okay? She’s in a better place now.” She pulls me up off the ground by my arms and pulls me into a tight hug. “It’s going to be okay.”

-PRESENT-

It hasn’t gotten better. I still think about her every day. Every day, I wish that it would have been my father instead. She was an amazing woman before she got sick. She deserved to live. When she died, everybody said it was for a reason that it was God’s plan. People said that time heals all wounds. But to this day neither time nor Reason Has changed the way I feel. Nobody knows how many times I’ve broken down. Nobody knows how many times I wanted to end it all. I remember the sound of her last breath she had been breathing raggedly for minutes on end. And there is nothing I could do about it.

I walk out of the living room and to my room, realizing I had just been standing there. I grab the letter that is hidden behind the random picture above my bed. It’s the only thing I have left of my mother other than the black ring that belonged to my grandfather. My father had gotten rid of everything else. I’ve probably read hundreds of times. My aunt had given it to me a few days after my mother had died.

Dear Benjamin,

If you are reading this, then something has happened to end our time here together.

Life will hold challenges for you and I won’t be around to tell you that things will get better and that you will come out of it stronger. I want you to hold on when things are bad. I want you to push thru when it feels like you can’t hold on any longer. Remember that you had a mother who loved you more than life itself. The day you were born was the single greatest day of my life. You are going to do so much in life. And I can’t wait to look down upon you and see you living your life to the fullest.

I put the letter back behind the picture and lie down on the pillow. The rain quietly taps its fingers on my window until sleep finds its way to me.