When Childhood Ends

Daily Prompt: Your assignment, if you choose to accept it is – write about a defining moment in your life when you were forced to grow up in an instant (or a series of instants).

It began like any other morning. Wake up. Look over at the bed next to me. Is my sister there? No…yes…maybe? I don’t remember. These mornings used to start off livelier. But, all that has changed now.  Not sure if it was the first stroke or the second or third heartache scare, but life around here is definitely different now.

Just a year ago, I was so excited about graduating from high school. Everyone was there. People I didn’t expect to make it came. People I had not seen in ten years…came. Yes, life was much livelier a year ago. My biggest concern was figuring out how to tell my parents their baby girl was moving out. Then it all changed. Life postponed. Decision diverted.

Fast Forward. Ring. Ring. Ring. “Who could be calling this early in the morning?” “Hello”, I say into the old corded phone. “Yes, hello, is Mrs. Nicholas there?” the monotone and emotionless voice asks. “No, she isn’t. She on the way to see my father”, I say into the receiver half sleep. You thought there might have been a pause. There wasn’t. “Mr. Nicholas suffered another heartache or stroke this morning…” the voice begins to speak. And, I lose track of what she is saying now. My thoughts go to my unsuspecting mother. There are no cell phones to available to call her. We just started purchasing pagers. What do I say? What do I do? I look at the receiver. The detached voice is still speaking. “I don’t know where she is.”, I say. “She may be at my grandmother”, I force out my dry and crackling throat. The call ends.

My heart is racing. My mind is spinning. I pick up the phone. “Hello Granny? Is mom there?” I manage to speak into the receiver. “Yes, they were just getting ready to head to the hospital”, my granny says. “Can I talk to her for a minute?” I ask. “The hospital just called I began through a teary chest. He died this morning.” I say. I hear the confusion first and then the determination, “What?” my mother says. “Let me go. I’ve got to get to the hospital”, she says.

I stare at the brutal source of my new adulthood. Yes, life used to be livelier I think. I place the phone back on its base. So this is how my childhood dies. I can’t think. I don’t feel like talking. So I write. Your words still ring in my ear dad twenty years later, c’est la vie.

“Poof: Welcome to Adulthood – Daily Prompt” by EYHCS (D. Boyland) is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.