Chelsie Paige

(I'm having a very hard time getting through this... so here it is unfinished)

I want to wrap him in my arms and never let him go, keep him safe, protect him from what is about to come.
But he doesn’t like being touched.
The church is huge and looks empty. There are not enough people for it to feel full, and I’m angry. There should be more people here, this is important.
I did not know Chelsie as well as I should have. The school district moved her up a year so that my brother wouldn’t be the only severely disabled child in the program. Chelsie had been born normal, but as a child developed a brain tumor. She had beat that one. And the second one. It was the third that brought us here.
I had only been to two funerals before this one, both family members who I was not close to. Technically, I was not close to Chelsie either. She was my little brother’s friend. His best and only friend. She had been moved up a grade so that the two special ed kids in the Brookline district would be together, and it worked fantastically. Chelsie liked me, although she only knew me as “Ross’ sister” and I of course liked her, it was impossible not to. I had pictures that she had drawn up on my wall, and a photograph of her with a big white bear in an Elmira t-shirt that I had sent her right after they found out her tumor was malignant. Her mom sent me a picture of her with the bear, and a certified Chelsie drawing, which still hangs on what I affectionately call my “wall of retarded art,” a segment of my dorm room dedicated to pictures by Ross and Chelsie.
We have all known that this is coming. I have been back in the country for three weeks now at the most, and I am thankful it happened after I came back. I dreaded call home, afraid that I would miss the moment when my little brother might need me the most. I am wearing shoes that I bought over in Russia, and I fixate on this point, that I have a chance to wear new heels, as a distraction from everything going on around me.
The church is huge, and it strikes me that this will be the first time I actually attend any kind of service in a Catholic church. I have always viewed them as relics, museums, places held in great reverence and observed for their history. In any other situation, this would excite me in some way, but today it simply makes me apprehensive. My mom and I aren’t sure how Ross will behave, we don’t even know how much of the situation he understands. His grasp of death is something we have no gauge on. When our dog of fifteen years died he showed no emotion, not even confusion as to where the dog was. Chelsie has been out of school for several months, will he understand that this means she’s not coming back? Does he understand gone?
We have taken our seats in the hard wooden pews, and the service starts. The priest begins with the story of Lazarus rising from the dead. I get it symbolically, through Jesus Chelsie will be reborn in Heaven, but can’t help but think it’s a horrible thing to read at a funeral. Lazarus’ family got him back, not metaphorically, for real, your child is still dead, your child isn’t coming back.

Sorry Bridget

need to sleep now, too out of it to edit anything, piece should be up tomorrow

Diversionary Tactics

I can’t remember what had upset her, just that I sat awkwardly. Samantha tried talking to her, making things worse instead of better. I thrive on a life of limited confrontation, avoiding sad people and making inappropriate comments at serious times. I try to diffuse situations I feel inept at dealing with, and I felt unqualified to help someone that I considered a friend, but had only really gotten to know in the past few weeks. Heather looks like she is about to cry, and I need to tune out.

I turn on the TV; I have always associated hotels with TV watching. I never watch it at home, yet I can’t stand to be in a hotel room with the TV off. Channel surfing reveals nothing in English, only French, and both Heather and Sam are looking at me, annoyed by my apathy. I settle on the cartoon station and hit mute.

“Bwahaha I am the evil carrot monster!”

They stop talking and glare. “What are you doing?” Sam asks.

“You’ve never played this game?” Heather has indeed started to cry, and if I want this to work, instead of simply make me look unhinged, I need to act quickly. “I do this all the time with the Spanish Channel, you hit mute and dub it yourself.” A robot character has started to talk “Oh look at me, I am so shiny I will defeat you… when the sun reflects off my glistening chest!”

Heather chokes out a laugh, and I pause, unsure if I should continue, or if I’m making things worse. The villainous carrot is back in the scene, and appears to be kicking ass.

Part of the fun of dubbing is that you have to think on the fly. I don’t know what this show is; subsequently I’ve never seen this episode. I don’t know what’s coming next. I try to think on my feet, covering line after line, hoping to have a semblance of a plot, even if that plot is absurd. I stop again.

“Why did you stop?” Heather’s face is still blotchy, but she seems to have stopped crying.

“I need some time to think.”

“Keep going! You’re hysterical!” Heather smiles for the first time all day, and Sam looks relieved that the situation didn’t evolve into a full-blown meltdown. The episode has ended. The robot and his friends seem to have saved the world from sinister carrots. Another episode of the same show starts and they both beg me to keep going. I keep it up for another half an hour, being as ridiculous as possible, listening to my two roommates-for-the-night laugh as I adapted what my parents and I usually saved for telenovela night to fit a French cartoon. My diversion worked, and as the Bastille Day fireworks started the three of us killed the lights, and the TV, and stood on my twin bed by the window, trying to get a good look.

Introduction

As a "serious writer" I've been thinking about creating a "serious blog" for about a month or so. Upon attending a recent creative nonfiction workshop I decided that, as a "serious writer" if I started the blog and held myself to posting one piece a week (I'm thinking of the creative nonfiction variety, but I'm willing to bend those rules). So here's the intro post, and either later today or tomorrow I have a piece I can post that just needs some mild editing, and then I'll put that up! I bet you are all super excited, I know I am.