The Trail of Tears

The Trail of Tears

I walked into the room on New Year’s Day and felt a sudden twinge of fear. My eyes already hurt from the tears I had shed and those tears would not stop even then the last viewing before we had to leave. She lay quietly on the bed with her face as void of emotion as a sheet of paper without the writing. Slowly, I approached the cold lifeless form that was once my mother and gave her a goodbye kiss.

I looked around at everyone in the room and saw the sorrow in their eyes. My eyes first fell on my grandmother, usually the beacon of strength in our family. My grandmother looked as if she had been crying for a very long period of time. Her face looked more wrinkled than before underneath the wild, white hair atop her head. The face of this once youthful person now looked like a grape that had been dried in the sun to become a raisin. Her hair looked like it had not been brushed since the previous day as if created from high wispy clouds on a bright sunny day.

Being my twin, Dylan gave me a slight look into what I looked like at the present time. The area around my brother’s eyes looked as though he was having a bad day with allergies. His face was as grim as a gargoyle’s, its stone eyes reflecting forever the scream that would never issue forth from its throat.

Gazing upon my sister, it was as though she had been replaced by her complete opposite. Where once her face had been covered with smiles all of the time, her face was now contorted with grief, and it looked like she would never smile again. Her look could only be described as a small child who has lost a toy in the sand box.

The machines to my right gave a loud hum as they continued to monitor my mother’s heartbeat, pulse,...

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...that the body was in, once the contents of the room left, the room was no longer important. Once the room was empty, we no longer wanted to be there or associated with it. The same goes for the body; it was not that we really needed the body but the soul that was contained therein. The body was wanted but not really of great importance because of what was gone. Therefore, the lesson was that the body was a container for the soul and not all that important. If we had no need for the body to be happy, then the soul was what made us happy. We did not need the body and were reminded that the soul went on to another place which gave us reason to stop grieving and move on with our lives.

Works Cited:

Mckay, D. (2004, February 20). I ask myself why? Post Poems.com

Retrieved February 21, 2004, from http://www.postpoems.com/ cgibin/displaypoem.cgi?pid=304934