Shimmers

Shimmers

Katie Carrol was going to kill herself.

She sat, motionless in front of her bedroom mirror, just wallowing in the knowledge that she was going to die, and die by her choosing. It wasn't about getting attention this time, though her family had only grown more detached from her the last time she tried. Her parents, while they were still together seemed to only succeed in filling her with all the faults they had, and then to add some extra’s, just for her. Katie was the product of a modern day parenting plan, in which love was an optional extra.
Katie understood suicide. She knew people would look back at her and say, 'How could she do that? She had so much going for her.' But she understood how all these things which are 'going for you' can suddenly become meaningless. She had always believed that in a place where everything is bad it’s always good to know the worst, and things couldn’t get worse than this.
She had not planned this, it had come more as a sudden realisation, that morning before school, that nothing in life held any value to her anymore, and so neither did life. Katie stared at her reflection in the mirror, and whispered a silent prayer.

“Dear Lord, If I forget you today, I pray you will understand and not forget me.”

**

Sue Carrol was chain smoking again. She always seemed to do this when she was nervous, though she never realised the rapidity at which she did it. The last time she could remember doing this was the day she went to her solicitors office to finalise her divorce. That day was filled with no small amount of bitterness, only a touch of regret as to little Katie's future, and a lot of smoke. It was Katie's 13th birthday when her mother signed the last papers to finally rid herself of her husband, three years ago to the day. Katie never really got over the split of her parents, though Sue couldn’t understand why, she thought that if something was gone and all past help, it should be past grief, she never could stand it when her daughter cried. Today was Katie’s 16th birthday. Sue had forgotten all about it, the only reason she knew now was because Katie had put up a calendar in the kitchen with a big red circle around April 23 and the words 'your daughters birthday, TRY and remember'. This was not the first time Katie's birthday had been forgotten, yet Sue never really thought that it was her fault, she was busy, she told herself. A few missed birthdays and school performances didn't make her a bad mother, did it? She wondered how she could delay her daughter inquiring as to her present until she could secure something that didn't look too rushed. Maybe a gift voucher, she thought.

It was cold that morning, and the wind stood still. Sue assumed that her daughter had just stayed in bed to keep warm. Well, she thought, it is her birthday. ‘I’m not that bad a mother after all’ She told herself as she made her way back to the kitchen, leaving her daughter to sleep a little while longer. The time was 8:30.
At 9:30 Sue decided that her daughter had slept in enough, and it was time for her to wake up, though she wasn’t sure how she’d manage to get out of being asked for a present as soon as Katie had showered and dressed. She raised her hand to knock on the door to her daughters room, but before she did she noticed a piece of paper folded in half and taped around eye level to the door. Sue took it and unfolded it slowly. Written inside in Katie’s near-perfect handwriting was the single sentence:

I Couldn’t go on living a lie that everyone believed.

**

The funeral was small, but elegant.

This was an attempt on Katie’s fathers behalf to rid himself of the guilt that plagued him. He turned up with his latest girlfriend.
Katie’s mother was not there. Two days after she found her daughter dead in her bedroom, Sue Carrol had admitted herself to a mental health clinic, for reasons of manic depression. Doctors of the clinic had put her on 24 hour suicide watch.
At least a hundred people from Katie's school attended the ceremony, but none were willing to get up and share their grief, so after the minister had finished, it looked as though there was nothing left to be said. But then a boy stood up, he must have been all of 15, and he looked skinny and gawky as he made his way to where the minister stood. He spoke then, his voice clear and high.

“’There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first great sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and have recovered hope.’
That Katie was pushed to a point where any solution seemed better than the life she faced will never be forgotten by any of us. For many of us have thought the same thoughts as she did, and wondered about the finality of the action that she so desperately sought. But maybe we can now see that death is no answer, maybe now we can see that hope is worth hanging around for.
Hope may not be the absolute belief that something will turn out well no matter what, but it is the certainty that that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. So we must make sense of how this life has turned out. We must believe that human life begins on the far side of despair.”
And with that, he turned and walked away, tears streaming down his face, knowing that he would probably be forgotten tomorrow by many of those present that day, but the entire time he was speaking, one thought was running through his head, echoing in his heart. ‘Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing, because he could only do a little’. So what if he was forgotten by many of those out there that day, it was the few that mattered to him, because he knew that there were a few sitting out there that would wake up the next morning, remember the words that skinny guy nobody knew said, and smile. Behind him, the sound of applause rose to his ears as he walked, and as he strode past the minister he realised one thing:
‘Death makes angels of us all’

By Jacob Lowry