Her lips quivered, “All along…all along, I believed I would find you.” I laughed because she did. When no one else believed I existed, when I couldn’t be found, she knew she would find me. She never gave up. Many did, but not this Little One – not even for a second.
My step-mom, my two elder step-sisters and elder step-brother, all left in fell swoop. And then, one by one by one by one…my Grandma…my eldest brother…my biological father (although he was a good one to lose)…then the house we all had last been in together…then my elder middle…then the youngest other than me. Slowly stripped so that each remaining piece was depended on that much more than the other and each loss reducing me slowly of everything I knew. Until I desperately clung to the remainder until it too was gone.
I wonder how many other people have squirmed in their doctor’s waiting room, feeling the heat of the past on the back of their neck, silently fighting to stay present in the discomfort of the company of strangers.
