A Closed Casket

A few days had passed since my parents had been declared dead by the police department. I had spent those days gathering what little I could from the ashes of our home. A few pictures had survived but were badly damaged, everything was replaceable. Everything except them. A crew from town had brought tractors over to start moving the remains of the building into a large dumpster.

The grey rubble of what once was alive with color now looked heartbreakingly dead. It was hard to put into words the way it made me feel. It was as if someone had decided not to finish a page in a coloring book, leaving a grey slate instead of doodling in some green to make it have some life. This is what defined the word dead to me. This is what scared me wholeheartedly, and it wasn’t until now that I had realized it.