By Aliyah Austin
The Bucs’ Blade
Grand Haven HS
1st Place
Division 1, News Writing
Personal Narrative
We lay on the floor together, surrounded by a fluff of Lion King sleeping bags and plaid pillows that smelled like cologne. Huddled under the fictitious comfort of blankets, I found myself wishing that my dad would limp through the door and replace it all.
In the hours beforehand, my fashion video game had been interrupted with news from my Grammy and Papa.
My daddy was dead.
I gazed around the apartment. I’ve heard that there are moments in life when you feel everything at once – then, there are times you don’t feel anything at all. After tolerating hugs, I retreated back to my room. Pushing the power button on the TV, I continued to style a virtual blonde barbie.
That night, my mom and my brother somehow wound up sleeping on the floor of the bedroom my sister and I shared.
The details are hazy, but one of us kids – I’m not quite sure who; that night, it felt like we were as one – said, “I miss Daddy.”
Engulfed in darkness, it was impossible to decipher my mother’s face. Yet, her choked reply reverberated through the dark room.
All she managed was, “I know, honey. I do, too.”
It was as though we’d been granted permission to let our collective sadness seep out of us.
Howling, we sobbed – the four of us, on the floor together, swaddled in blankets, drowning in our sadness.
Only, we weren’t drowning.
Each racking sob, each salty tear was proof that we were alive. That moment taught me that to be sad, is to be alive.
Sometimes, life still gets the best of me and tears threaten to leak onto the carefully composed canvas that I have worked so hard to perfect. I may not remember until my eyes are red and my nose is running, but I’m alive – my dad isn’t. So I’m determined to feel everything life throws at me, and I am determined to feel it deeply.
I’m not saying that we should be sad; sadness is inevitable. People say, “don’t be sad – smile,” because they like to believe that a carefully composed canvas is more beautiful than one that has been tattered and splattered upon. I plan on splattering my canvas with the darkest of blues, the bloodiest of reds and the most jealous of greens. That’s how I know I’m living life and living it well; as long as I’m crying, I’ll know that I’m not dying.
So I’ll weep over every Nicholas Sparks novel; I’ll even settle for the movie adaptations. I will wail over Severus Snape and Lily Evans and their tragic love story that never really was. And I will bawl when I think that my canvas has finally gotten too tattered and too splattered to ever again create something new – and after I’m done, I’ll dry my tears because I’ll remember that to be sad is to be alive.