Sorry.
A word I got used to hearing like a song after May 13, 2017.
Sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for your loss...
God. I hate that word. It usually comes accompanied with a pitiful frown, or a "I know it must be hard on you" grimace. It never ceased to amaze me how people thought they could presume to know anything about the depth of your emotions. Or what must or mustn't be so hard on you. The first time I heard it was when we arrived at the hospital. The doctor spoke to my Mom in slow hushed tones as if she were a baby. "I'm sorry, but your son-" "His name is Matthias." Mom interrupted. He hesitated. "Y-es of course, Matthias has suffered severe blunt force head trauma to his brain... Ma'am there really is no easy way to put this. But there's nothing more we can do for him.. if only he was transported to us sooner but, I'm afraid he's suffering from internal bleeding... At best I'd give him 2 days." His face twisted in a rehearsed pained expression as if it hurt him just as much that my brother (his patient) would soon leave me, as if he wouldn't just go on with his life while our lives fell into the pit. My mom sobbed, then screamed. There had to be something he could do, he was a Doctor wasn't he?! My shaking knees gave out and I slunk down, down to the floor in a flash of shock. He directed her to a seat. And assured us that he had done all he could do. It would take a miracle to reverse the damage. Wasn't Matty worth a miracle? He suggested we come to terms with Matty's impending death before we said our final goodbyes, so it wouldn't be as hard on us. I don't know if I would have described losing my best friend as hard. What should hard feel like, Is it ever easy?  But I do know what it felt like to lose Matty. Or at least that's what my mom called it but I always hated it. I didn't lose Matty. Nothing I could have done would have kept him with me. It wasn't like I had just misplaced him, like my keys or something. I was there, staring him in his distant eyes, hand in hand, I held on to him and begged him to stay, and I watched as he left. He left me all alone. left me to lose myself. I know my mom lost him too. I think it was hard on her. But I don't think I'll ever know if she let it be hard. After the funeral(We called it a memorial because that's what Matty would have wanted.) She was bedridden for 3 months. We never talked about Matty's death. So I had to try to deal with it on my own, I hated that I had to deal with not just Matty's death but his life, his passions, his interests, his laughter, his love. I now had to tell everyone who he was. Keep his memory alive with others just as alive as he was with me, I had to remember who he was to me... Sometimes remembering knocked the wind out of me. And I clutched on to whatever was near me and dry-heaved through them until my lungs threatened to collapse. Until one day Mom got out of bed and went back to work. As simple as that. When I asked her about it that night, she sighed and smiled the saddest smile I'd ever seen, "I have to work Sam. I can't stay in bed forever. We have to move on now... Have to move on with the parts of ourselves he didn't take with him. Okay?" I didn't say anything. I hated her for leaving me alone just like Matty did. She left for work. Everything went back to well.. Not normal. Autopilot. We did what we had to do to survive. Days, months, and years came by and by. Which I guess made everyone assume it wasn't so hard on me anymore. It wasn't, it was just a slow, dark, descent down, down into the pit. I was turning 17 in two months, but that didn't matter because Matty should have been 19.