The Berry Pickers

by Amanda Peters

“People will be someone other than themselves if they have people who rely on them,” Mae

There was love in that house, but none of us really knew what to do with it.

When you’re an only child, semi-imprisoned, books become more than paper between hard cardboard, more than the alphabet organized into words and printed on a page.

Some people, I have learned, are meant to read great works and others are meant to write them. Often, these are not the same people.

That’s why I found it strange that no word exists for a parent who loses a child. If children lose their parents, they are orphans. If a husband loses his wife, he’s a widower. But there’s no word for a parent who loses a child. I’ve come to believe that the event is just too big, too monstrous, too overwhelming for words. No word could ever describe the feeling, so we leave it unsaid.

Even people who exude light and happiness have dark secrets. Sometimes, the lie becomes so entrenched it becomes the truth, hidden away in the deep recesses of the mind until death erases it, leaving the world a little different. Secrets and lies can take on a life of their own, they can be twisted and manipulated, or they can burst into the world from the mouth of someone just as they are starting to lose their mind.

Time quickens the older you get, as if the universe is trying to push you toward the finish line, to make room for the younger, the stronger, to mark your brief place in history and move on.

“Anger is exhausting. Holding on to it will drain the life out of you.”