Sometimes We Have to Let go

The voice echoed in my mind “,but sometimes we have to let go.” Not me I thought. Everyone can let go but me.

I turned my face upward. Snow kissed my cheeks and forehead and for a moment I forgot where I was, what I was doing. The feelings inside me reduced from a boil to a simmer. I closed my eyes and let the cold embrace me. Icy tendrils snaked their way up my arms and between the buttons on my shirt. I shivered.

Urgency drew my eyes open and the cold kept them that way. All I could do was shift my gaze but the hole in front of me kept reeling it in. It drew my attention to it when all I wanted was to look away, to look into the sky or the darkness behind my eyelids. No matter how much I tried to avoid it though, the hole would always be there, waiting for me.

I let my eyes fall upon the rectangular hole and urged my hands to work. They filled the grave with another shovel full of dirt. Then another, and another. My hands had gone numb but I could still see the shovel gripped tight between frozen fingers. I had become so cold it was as if I was watching through the eyes of someone else.

I forged on but warmth did not blossom inside me till I was inside the cabin by the fire. It thawed every nerve and set a wave of pain washing over me. I bundled up under a blanket, pulling it tight around me with shaking hands. My body rocked back and forth like a child trying to calm himself from night terrors. The only difference, my nightmares were real and had killed my sister.