“Mummy, do monsters really exist?”
Those few words haunt my memory even now, months later. Though I no longer remember what my answer was that day, I know it should have been yes. I know that isn’t a very reassuring answer but it’s the truth. Maybe not the big, ugly, scary ones from under the bed or in the closet, but just the same I know without question real monsters do exist. And they look just as human as the next person.
Twice now they’ve changed my life forever. Once should have been enough. More than enough. Or at least that is what you would think.
The image of a child’s innocent and trusting eyes fills me with so much pain. She was only a little girl. A sweet, precious, little girl. So young. So innocent. So full of potential. And now…now it has all gone. Wiped out in a matter of moments. Never given the opportunity to even really live.
It just doesn’t seem right that it turned out this way. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem possible. But I know it is. It has to be because I feel so empty. As though there is nothing good left inside anymore.
She was my reason for getting up every day. The reason I kept pushing on. Now what? How can I keep going when there is no real reason to? More to the point, why should I?
The eyes that stare back at me from the mirror seem lifeless. Unfocussed, as if unseeing. I shut them in an effort to forget. But now, instead of my own reflection, I see her. The way she looked that morning. That cheeky smile, the way it used to light up her whole face. A dimple denting her right cheek. Her eyes sparkling. It seems clichéd but that is what I see.
My mind screams, partly in denial and partly in anguish, as it replays the events of that afternoon.
I struggle to regain control of my emotions. I try to focus on the brush in my hand, but that image gets lost among others as memories of my daughter come flooding back.
Those few words haunt my memory even now, months later. Though I no longer remember what my answer was that day, I know it should have been yes. I know that isn’t a very reassuring answer but it’s the truth. Maybe not the big, ugly, scary ones from under the bed or in the closet, but just the same I know without question real monsters do exist. And they look just as human as the next person.
Twice now they’ve changed my life forever. Once should have been enough. More than enough. Or at least that is what you would think.
The image of a child’s innocent and trusting eyes fills me with so much pain. She was only a little girl. A sweet, precious, little girl. So young. So innocent. So full of potential. And now…now it has all gone. Wiped out in a matter of moments. Never given the opportunity to even really live.
It just doesn’t seem right that it turned out this way. It doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem possible. But I know it is. It has to be because I feel so empty. As though there is nothing good left inside anymore.
She was my reason for getting up every day. The reason I kept pushing on. Now what? How can I keep going when there is no real reason to? More to the point, why should I?
The eyes that stare back at me from the mirror seem lifeless. Unfocussed, as if unseeing. I shut them in an effort to forget. But now, instead of my own reflection, I see her. The way she looked that morning. That cheeky smile, the way it used to light up her whole face. A dimple denting her right cheek. Her eyes sparkling. It seems clichéd but that is what I see.
My mind screams, partly in denial and partly in anguish, as it replays the events of that afternoon.
I struggle to regain control of my emotions. I try to focus on the brush in my hand, but that image gets lost among others as memories of my daughter come flooding back.
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