The Bluestocking 2022-23

Amelia Campbell | Grade 12 A Piece Removed

She hadn’t moved in exactly eight hours and nineteen minutes. All she had been doing was lying on the floor and praying this was a nightmare. She had lain there simply let ting the realization sink in that a piece of her had died and would never come back. It had been exactly eight hours and nineteen minutes since she had opened the door with confusion as she saw the drawn face of the officer and received the most paralyzing words she had ever heard. No one had bothered to try and move her, let alone help her out of her tear-soaked clothing to comfort her. The constant loop of events had replayed in her mind and forced more guilt, sadness, and pain into her heart. It had been her fault she let him go that morning, her fault she hadn’t had time to pack a lunch, and her fault that he had been there at that exact time. He had been standing on the corner, waiting to walk home, when a red car had taken away the life of her innocent child. She remembered feeling a hand on her shoulder that jolted her back to reality. The hand belonged to a soft voice that quietly told her to try and move upstairs. The voice that had reminded her that she couldn’t lay there forever. They had helped her to her feet, and she had slowly made her way up the stairs with tears unconsciously dripping out of her red eyes. She recalled turning left at the top of the stairs to see his room, just like she had every day for the past nine years of her life. School photos, soccer medals, messy finger paintings. Would she ever be able to walk past his room without those reminders ripping a bigger hole in her heart? More memories of her only child began to flood back. She recounted the first time she laid eyes on him, one of the hardest moments of her life followed by the greatest. He had been gently placed in her arms by the nurse. She had marveled at his little feet and his even smaller fingers. He was the most precious creature she had ever seen. She had watched her husband hold him and remembered thinking nothing would ever compare to the bond between mother and son. The life she had grown inside her was one that she would protect until the day she died. She just never thought that his life would be gone before hers.

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