Khimilia Delair/Diary/After the loss

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Loss is like a massive flod. It comes quickly, unexpected, and leaves everything you once knew and had, devasted. There is no where to run, no where to flee, and you work against the never ending tides of despair, until you can no more. You see the walls crumbling, crushed by ever more waves coming over you. Knee deep, as grief, hatred, despair rush past you. An odour of decay and resignation builds around you, and every breath makes the wish the let yourself go with the tide a bit stronger. You lift your head above the water, only to see those you love drowning in the same way you do. And if at that very moment, one does not fight to remain with the others, all drown in the downward spiral that follows him as he sinks deeper into the abyss.

Eventually the water disappates, having corrupted everything it came in contact with. You begin the endless effort to replace everything it destroyed. After every water soaked item you dispose, you wish that this one will be your last; never ever to be reminded of that catastrophy again.

For the first two weeks, my mother slept through most of the day. When she was awake, she rarely talked to us, or went outside of the house. Many of her sisters and brothers came by, to check on her, although we usually sent them away again. Father went to work as usual; even though his boss gave him a few weeks off. I understood him very well, at home everything reminded him of Sarah. He would not talk about the accident either, until his grief toppled over and broke out. In furious rage and anger he destroyed that old Mercedes he had been working on for week with a sledge hammer. We all came running to the garage, and saw him hammering away, crying and screaming in pain. No one dared to get too close to him, out of fear he could not tell friend from foe. Mother broke out in tears, seeing the man she loved in so much pain. She could not bear it any longer, and Matthias took her out of the garage.

"Hea auf!", I screamed repeatedly at him.

But he didn't hear me. He stood on the hood of the car, lifted his hammer up high and smashed it down with fury. The hammer bursted through the roof, and got stuck. He tried to pull it out, yet slipped and sat down on the hood of the Mercedes.

"Hea auf. D'mama rert scho wegen dia!", I said.

He looked back at me, with wide eyes. Sweat ran down his face, and he breathed heavily. He looked back at his car. It felt like eternity, until he answered:

"I hät mit dem wogn in L17 gmocht.", he said silently.

"Kum.", I stretched out my hand, "Du host gnuag ogricht fia heid.".

Mother came rushing in, and she fell into the arms of her husband. Matthias looked at me from outside, and made a gesture with his head that I should leave them alone. I complied.

For a few months after the accident Matthias and I would meet in the middle of night in the kitchen. Both woken up and kept awake by recreations of the accident in our head. Like a reel looping endlessly, throwing questions around in our heads. Why her, and not us instead? Why couldn't we stop any of it? We would sit around the kitchen table looking at each other. Words were not required, as each of us understood to well what it was the other one is going through. Sometimes dawn we would sit there until dawn, sometimes night would have us again. And sometimes we would even be joined by our brother, mother and father.