The Potential of a Day

Prologue

Prologue

                When I look back at the pictures, I always think her hair was a shade lighter than mine. The truth is, my hair probably just grew darker with time; time she never had... I still remember that day. Mom and I teased her; we said she looked like an angel. With her white sweatshirt, white sneakers, white denim shorts, and that beautiful, white-blond hair of hers. We wouldn't have said anything, if we had known; if we had known that that would be the day she joined the angels. We wouldn't have said anything if we had known, that a couple hours later, those angelic white clothes would be stained a brilliant crimson...

          It wasn't like it is in the movies. There wasn't that moment of screeching brakes, and headlights. There wasn't that slow motion moment of the car spiraling out of control. There wasn't that moment, where we saw the other driver's face. Unlike the movies, nothing happened slowly. There weren't the silent breaths of anticipation, before the collision.

          I would like to be able to say, that before we were hit, we were having a normal conversation. Despite how strange it might sound, I would like to remember the sounds; the pleasant sound of conversation, as it was cut harshly to an end, the screech of oncoming tires, gripping at road they just couldn't quite catch onto, the scream. Maybe it would be easier, if my memories of that afternoon were clouded with sound. But they aren't. We weren't talking, when the other car hit us; we didn't hear wailing breaks, or a horn, I think my Mom might have cried out, but that was such a short sound.

          It would be easier, if all I could remember were the sounds. But there are no sounds to be remembered of that day. What I remember the best is the silence. Not the sounds. The silence. The silence, between the collision, and the time when the paramedics arrived. The silence, as I was shocked speechless. The silence, as my mother lost consciousness. In my memory, that day is silent.

          But it wasn't my silence, or my mother's which makes me wish I remembered some awful noise. Because we got to make up for that silence in the future.

          What hurts me more deeply than most anything else, is that I can't remember her last words. In the movies, the last words are always some dramatic monologue. Usually with music playing in the background. But her last words weren't memorable, and there is no soundtrack for life. I like to think she was the smarter one; I'm sure, if she had known they would be her last, her final words could have been quite insightful. She always was insightful. But no one of could have known what would happen that afternoon. And she didn't even get the chance to know she was dying. Sometimes I wonder if she ever even got the chance to realize she was dead.

          Sephie never woke up. She was pronounced dead three hours later, in a hospital bed. A white hospital bed, in a white hospital room. The other car hit us from behind, slightly at an angle. She hadn't been wearing a seatbelt that day. She flew right across the back of the car, and practically out the window. In the end, the doctors couldn't tell if it was the blood loss, the fractured neck, or the concussion that ended her life.

          It wasn't like it was in the movies. I wasn't holding her hand when the heart monitor went flat. She died while my mother was in her own hospital bed, and I was in the waiting room eating with my father; something we were forced to do by a nurse.

          Nothing about the car crash, or the hospital, or my twin sister's death, was anything like the movies.

          But then again, why would it be?

          If I learned anything from that afternoon, it was that life is not anything like the movies. It isn't even like a book. Life doesn't have a soundtrack. Life doesn't accentuate the significant parts. Life doesn't ever go into slow motion. It doesn't wait for you, to get over loss. Life just is.

          Life will not slow down. And if you can't keep up, you get left behind, and there's no way around that.

          I can't keep up.