Death

It’s the small things that annoy me about autumn—the lack of birds, the oxygen-deprived leaves, the constant color red. Every day, all day, from the East Coast to the West Coast, the streets are blanketed with red. Such a lifeless color given to a lifeless season. Autumn shouldn”t even be considered a season; it’s just the transition of summer to winter. It’s non-important. Autumn is spring without a heartbeat—the heart remains, but the beating is not present.

And what”s the point of a heart with no heartbeat?

The dying leaves make it seem like a virus has swept through the streets of New York City, but that’s exactly what autumn is—a virus. To everyone else, autumn represents the death of summer, but to me, it represents the death of my family. The worst part about autumn is that it”s my name.

I sat on the public bus, leaning against the window with my face devoid of emotion, as if it had frozen that way. There was no reason to smile, so why pretend? A lot of people said I had RBF. Resting Bitch Face. Honestly, I wasn’t even too mad about it because that meant people would stay the fuck away from me.

I watched as drops of rain trickled down the glass, streaking my view. Outside the bus, people were running around, trying to seek shelter so that they wouldn”t get wet. Kind of idiotic, though. You couldn’t outrun rain. I looked out at the road and noticed the streets were starting to flood as the tires on the bus splashed through the water. I was lost in my thoughts when the windows were illuminated by a flash of lightning followed by a loud roar of thunder. The storm was getting worse. I reached down, thrusting my hand inside my purse as I fumbled around for my AirPods, popping one in each ear. I quickly thumbed through the music, assuming that it would drown out the unapologetically loud thunder. Unable to decide what song to listen to first, I hit the shuffle button.

Currently playing – Slipped Away by Avril Lavigne

Of course, the first song to play hinted at dying. Death was the whole reason I was on a damn bus at 7:45 a.m. instead of at work. When the other nurses heard the news about what happened, of course, they all offered their condolences, with a mix of—

“He’s in a better place now.”Not sure about that one—and—“I’m so sorry for your loss.” I lost him years ago.

My dad always knew how to be around without ever actually being present. Even as a kid, I never felt like he was really there. Sure, he lived with us, but there was a dullness behind his eyes that no one seemed to notice except me. I last spoke to my dad five years ago, right before he moved to California. Now, at twenty-one years old, I would finally see him again, just not in the way I had expected. I never planned on going there to visit him, at least certainly not like this. The funeral was in twenty-four hours, and I was dreading it. My mom flew out a couple days ago, but I, on the other hand, had decided to postpone the flight for as long as I possibly could, all while blaming it on the fact that I needed to finish up the week at work, but now it was the day before the funeral and I had no more excuses. My flight leaves JFK at 11:00 a.m. eastern time and lands in San Diego at 2:00 p.m. western time which gave me just enough time to go back to my apartment so that I could grab my suitcase and head back out. I didn”t want to be in California for any longer than I had to.

Caught up in my own narrative, I suddenly realized that the song I was listening to had ended and I hadn’t managed to hear a single word. I debated on rewinding it, but the next song started before I could.

Currently playing – CPR by Lexi Harlow

Lexi’s new album was just released a month ago, and CPR was one of the millions of songs in the world that I didn’t mind listening to over and over again. Yeah, no way I was skipping one of the best songs ever. I let the music soak in as I tried to allow the melody to echo in my head.

Easily, my mind began to drift off once more. I started to think about the funeral I was about to attend. I started to think about my father.

Is all of this really worth it?

There was a point in my life where I thought my father had changed. Right after he left, I clawed for pieces of broken memories and tried to cherish the ones that made me happy…that was, until I got older and realized that those moments were never as amazing as I had tried to build them up to be. Toward the end, he smiled more. Deep down, I knew there had to be a reason for his sudden change in attitude, and the chances of that reason being because he finally realized being a part of my life was more important than going to a bar were slim to none. As a kid, I tried to ignore the pit growing in my stomach every time I thought of why he suddenly seemed so happy, but eventually, I couldn”t anymore. God, how I wish I would”ve stopped trying to piece it together. That was the start of the domino effect that would cause our family to crumble. Of course, my mom came running in with a band-aid to mend the wounds, but once she saw the scale of the disaster, she realized there was no fixing it. But that’s fine. I was fine. Everything was okay, just like it had always been. I guess I had the same problem as everyone else—I wanted to do better than okay and be more than just fine. So, what did you do when you wanted to improve your mental health? You’d go to therapy and pay thousands of dollars for someone to tell you the things that you already knew and hopefully perform surgery on your soul.

Too bad I couldn’t squeeze in one extra session before my trip.

At least I had my music—the same music that I had been neglecting for the second time today. I sighed as I felt the bus heave to a stop and open its doors. Grabbing my bag, I threw it over my shoulder and stepped off the bus.