~Sound~
The
sensation produced by stimulation of the organs of hearing by vibrations
transmitted through the air or other medium. Sounds are shocks of waves that
can cause some of the best and worst feelings. It is funny how an ordinary,
everyday sound can bring back some of the worst, and best memories of your
life. I will never forget the sound I heard the night my life changed forever.
The
phone ringing is an ordinary sound for most people. When you’re a child it is
an exciting sound. You never know who is on the other end. But as you grow it
can be a sound of longing. Will that person call me and ask me out? Will the
phone ever ring? The sound of the phone ringing can mean a number of
possibilities, both positive and negative. If you had asked me before, I would
say I always got excited to answer the phone. Always wanted to talk to people,
but now, the sound of the phone is piercing. It stops me dead in my tracks.
It is not the tone of the ringing that began
my thoughts of the unknowing news on the other end. It is the time the phone
began to ring, late on Saturday evening. Ring. Ring. Ring. Who on earth could
be calling on this night? Ring. Ring.
Ring. Nothing could possibly be wrong, because bad things do not happen to me
and my family. Ring. Ring. Ring. It is probably him calling to say that he is
going to be later than he expected, which will make mom made because tomorrow
is Mother’s Day. Although mom hates Mother’s day, we still have to be up early
for church, we have to stay awake for the long mass, and we have to see the whole
family. Ring. Ring. Ring. Just an ordinary sound that never meant anything to
me until… until I heard the next sounds that followed. Ring. Ring. Ring. And
silence.
“The ringing was nothing.” I thought,
“Nothing wrong is going on, everything is going to be the same and nothing is
wrong”. Then came the next sound. Knock. Knock. Knock. It was ever so silent; I
almost didn’t hear it, “was that a knock or was it the wind?” Knock. Knock. Knock. Ever so soft,” it is
probably sound of something falling, or the cat getting into something?” Knock.
Knock. Knock. “It was nothing just a figment of my active imagination.” Knock.
Knock. Knock. An everyday noise that on an ordinary day would mean nothing to
me but on this day, the soft knock would soon become a loud bang that I would
never forget. Knock. Knock. Knock, soon became Bang. Bang. Bang. An abrupt
noise that would become the people who were crashing into my life and destroy
the only world I knew.
Then I heard an unfamiliar sound
from a person I knew all too well. A sound which can tell a person two things, something
terrible has happened, or some sort of excitement. This was the sound of a loud
scream. A scream so loud that it penetrated through my body, the screeching
noise paralyzed me. The only thing that could move was the thousand thoughts
racing through my mind. “Maybe it was just my brother sneaking up on my mom and
giving her a fright so that why she is screaming.” “Maybe my mom just found the
mess the cat made, that would explain the knocking sound. Maybe something it is
something else, and something is terribly wrong though. Whatever I had imagined
the sounds were, I was wrong in every way. For I could not imagine the next
sound that that I would hear.
I thought about not going out to the
front room. What if I went out there and nothing was wrong. What if my mother decided
to yell at me because I was supposed to be in sleeping? What if? What if? What
if? Finally, I let my curiosity get the
best of me. I had to know what all the sounds were about; I had decided in a
moment that my mother yelling at me was worth me finding out what all the noise
was. It was worth knowing what caused the scream. So I put on my brave face and
walked down the long dark hallway. The hallway that had once seemed short to me
but not on this night, no this night the hallway was long and dark; the bright
colors of the hallway seemed dim, and the floor seemed cold. A cold that once your
bare feet touch it, it sent shivers all over my body. I finally made it to the
end of the hallway, and what I saw and heard was not in the least bit what I
expected. Despite my negative thoughts and feelings, I was hoping to find my
brother standing behind my mother laughing because he had frightened her.
At the end of the hallway was my
mother barely able to stand, tears rushing down her face like the water flowing
down Niagara Falls. Standing next to her was my father. A man who rarely shows
emotion unless he is smiling or cracking jokes. My father was not cracking
jokes on this night though. Instead of that familiar smile, there was an unrecognizable
expression on his face. An expression filled with sorrow and confusion. His
eyes were bloodshot from the pain he was feeling. While standing frozen at the
end of the hallway, registering the sight in front of me, I must have adjusted
my weight because the floor creaked beneath me. My mother turned around to look
at me, as I walked out of the dark hallway into the light of the front room. I
stood still as I heard the sound of her screaming the words that would forever
change my life…”YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD!”
I stood for a moment paralyzed by
the words that had been shouted at me. My body was frozen unable to move. My
mind was racing and unable to make sense of the words that have been screamed
at me. As I finally gathered up the strength to move, to put one leg in front
of the other, and made my way to my mother I noticed something that I did not
see at first. Two police officers were standing in the room. I honestly thought
it only happened in the movies or to families with members in the military.
However, it happens in real life, it happened in my life. The cops knocking on
the door to deliver the news that will destroy you and the innocence you once
had. The news that you never want to get, that your family will be forever
broken, that a loved one is not coming home.
Suddenly the familiar sounds that
once had no meaning, held so much meaning to me. It is funny how the sounds
that you hear everyday can one day change your world and you do not even know
it. The ringing of the phone had been his friends calling us, asking if he had
come home. The knocking was the sound of the cops coming to the house to say
there had been and accident. Dan had lost control of the car, after dropping a
friend off. The screaming was my mother unable to control her raw emotions of
finding out that her first born, her only son was taken from this world and she
would never see him alive again. I will never for get the sound of my mother’s
voice that night yelling, no screaming at me “ YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD!” those
words will haunt me for the rest of my life. “YOUR BROTHER IS DEAD”. “YOUR
BROTHER IS DEAD”!
Sounds; ordinary sounds that change
your life. sounds that push you in another direction. Sounds that can take you
from one life stage and push you into another stage of life. The stage of my
life that once was innocent would now enter the 5 different stages of the
grieving process.
