**trigger warning: family death**

took him away. They made it sound like they might be able to bring him back at the hospital but I think they said it out of kindness. As they took him away my mum called to them telling them to be gentle with him, as if he could still feel. I don't remember much after that. A week later we flew back to the States with his body and had a funeral and wake. I don't remember the burial. I was 6.

I unknowingly repressed these memories until I was 16 and it came flooding back in a dream (it was a dream but it was the entire memory not dream like). I called my then boyfriend, now husband, sobbing in the middle of the night. My brother would be 15 in August. I'm the only one who visits his grave. And if I'm being honest I hate going, but I have to make sure the grounds keeper keeps it cleared since there is a bush next to his grave. Last summer I stormed into the mausoleum/office area furious because his grave was completely grown over and was ready to tear their heads off (it takes a lot to piss me off but that day I was an unstoppable force). The lady was shaken by the sight of me and I could clearly see she was ill, all red and a mound of tissues. I explained what was happening and told her I wasn't mad at her personally and I told her briefly told her I was the one who had found his body and she asked what had happened and I told her it had been an accident and that's why I was so fired up. She put me in contact with the director who got a very fiery email with thinly veiled civility.

My mother died on the side of a road five blocks away from our apartment, on my father's arms, and while I was home emptying the dish washer. They must have been gone for 45 minutes or so when my father called and asked me if I was alright. "Why wouldn't I be? I'm fine... Wait, why are you asking? Are YOU alright?"

I wasn't there when she died, or when the ambulance and the cops arrived, or when the crowd came out to check out the accident. My father vanished into the hospital and who knows where else for the rest of the morning and afternoon. And I went to see the spot where she had died. What else could I do? There wasn't going to be a goodbye, one last hug or conversation. I wasn't even going to see her body. The only thing I could do to connect the idea of my mother -talking,moving,breathing, full of life- and the fact she didn't exist anymore was the place where she ended.

She died of hypovolemic shock, caused by a massive rupture of the spleen and torax. I understand those terms because my parents were trauma surgeons. I assumed all the bleeding had been internal, but I was wrong.

It wasn't until I saw my father that night that he told me she also suffered a flesh wound on the forehead, which bleed profusely and covered part of her face and hair, as well as my father's shirt, pants and arms. And when I went to the place of the accident I wasn't so impressed by the police line and tire marks on the road, but the puddle of blood was shaped almost like a perfect cyrcle, except for a small path of smeared blood that my father created when he tried to give her medical attention. He told me that he knew it was useless, so after a few dumb attempts to supply oxygen, he just lifted her and held her in his arms.

I run on that same little road daily, and pass the exact spot where the pool of blood was, and look down on the dike where her shoes and bike ended up. I pass it very quickly, because I'm running, but I see it every day. It looks no different from any side of any road in the world. No one but my father and I know that's where my mom died. Except perhaps for the man who killed her, but I'm not here to talk about him. I just run and glance for a second to notice the spot that I know I'll recognize even if 50 or 100 years pass.

@intelligentSnowflake83