Nezhla
A Wakeup To Reality
On January 15, 2007 my whole life changed. For the first time in my life, I came face to face with reality. It started out as a regular day. I woke up, did some homework, went to a movie with my friend Mandy, and then later went out to dinner. Usually I talk to my sister Zoya on a daily basis, but today I hadn’t because I was a little busy. I didn’t think much of it. I just figured I’d talk to her later that night.
When my mom came to pick me up from the movie she told me that no one had seen or talked to my sister that day. This came as somewhat of a surprise to me because my mom and sister talk even more often than my sister and I do! She said she had called Zoya several times, but never got an answer. I could sense the uneasiness in my mom’s voice. Her voice was shaky like the plates on a shelf during an earthquake. By then I was a little worried, but I kept telling myself I was overreacting. I assured myself that her phone was probably on silent and she was sleeping in late, or that she lost it or something.
Once I got home my dad and I decided to drive down to Zoya’s apartment just to make sure everything was alright. It’s only a ten minute drive from our house to her apartment, so it wasn’t a hassle to go down there. The car ride down was a quiet one. Hardly a word came out of me or my dad’s mouth. The silence was tearing me up inside, but there really wasn’t anything to talk about. I hoped nothing horrible had happened. I just kept telling myself, “It’s fine. Don’t worry about it. Nothing’s wrong. This is probably just a false alarm. I’m freaking out for no reason. She’s probably sleeping.”
As we took the left turn to my sister’s street I could feel my heart drop down into my stomach, as if I had came down a big drop on a rollercoaster. I prayed everything was alright, but it wasn’t. Police cars filled up every parking space in the lot in front of the apartment. Caution tape wrapped its arms around the entrance. Was there a fire? A bankrubery? So many thoughts were running through my mind. My first instinct was to open the door and run out right then, but my dad told me to wait for him so we could go together. My heart started to pound faster, and faster, and faster. And when my dad parked the car I shot off running faster than I ever had before. There was no time to waste.
Running, running and running up the hill to get to the door, as fast as I could. I was fighting a battle inside. Two police officers stopped us right in front of the stair case to her door.
The police officer asked “Excuse me sir, who are you”
My dad, in his panicked voice responded, “Zoya’s father. WHAT’S GOING ON? LET ME SEE ZOYA.”
The officer looked down at the floor, and then straight into my father’s eyes and calmly said, “Your daughter has passed away.”
Just like that. Plain and simple, with absolutely no feeling. “Passed away”
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I started to scream. I cried. I yelled louder than I ever had before. I hugged my dad and cried in his arms. I fell to the floor onto my knees and just punched the floor wondering why, how. How could this be? I was utterly shocked; in a true stage of disbelief.
I screamed, “MY SISTER WAS EVERYTHING TO ME. I AM NOTHING WITHOUT HER. WHYYYYYYYYY. THIS CAN’T BE. IT CAN’T BE TRUE. ZOYAAA. COME BACKK. TAKE ME NOT HER. ZOYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”
I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself. So many emotions rushed through my body. Regret, disbelief, confusion, anger, and sadness. I’m only fifteen. I’m not supposed to know how to deal with something like this.
All my dad would keep saying is, “Nezhla you are everything to me. You are all we have left. Nezhla I love you. You are everything to me. We have to be strong, we have to.”
That night I cried more than I ever have before. I saw my dad at his absolute lowest and my mom at hers too. No one will ever be able to understand how this feels. My own parents couldn’t comfort me because they were just as horrified and traumatized as I was, if not more. None of us knew what to do with ourselves.
This was the last thing I was expecting. I’ve always seen it on T.V., in movies, and on the news but it really doesn’t mean anything to people if it doesn’t happen to them personally. I never thought this would happen to me. It’s only in movies. My family isn’t like that. But nothing makes me different than the hundreds of families that have had to go through this. You hear it on the news all the time, “300 soldiers shot and killed during war at the battlefront” but do those words really mean something to you? They do to me now. 300 soldiers dead. Gone. They will never come back. That’s 300 families who will NEVER see their family member again. People today take death so lightly these days. It’s like we hear it so much it hardly even affects us at all. It’s all over the news, TV, and everything. You can’t go a day on the news without hearing about someone dying, but death is the hardest thing to deal with.
Above all, it is the hardest. I guarantee you. There’s nothing you can do to bring anyone back. It’s over. It’s done. But the thing is, the feeling never leaves you. It stays with you everyday. To this day there hasn’t been one day that’s gone by where I haven’t thought about my sister. She’s always on my mind. I’ll never forget her beautiful face and loving personality. I think about her all the time. January 15th 2007 was a wakeup to reality. My life will never be the same after this day. There will always be something missing. I’ll never be as happy as I used to be. I just can’t. Half of me is gone, but I am no longer afraid of death.
I’ve learned from this that death gives meaning to life. Living in fear of death is living in denial. Actually, it’s not really living at all because there is no life without death. It’s two sides of the one. You have to pick up both sides because nothing is promised to anyone in this world besides death. As soon as a life is created, from the first moment, it’s promised that that life’s going to end. It doesn’t matter if that life goes on to cure every disease ever known, or brings about the end of the world as we know it, that life is going to end no matter what. You can be sure of that. Death is going to follow life, just like night follows day. It is what it is. Its’ reality, and it hurts to believe it, but it’s true.