What Would You Carry?

What Would You Carry?

  • Submitted By: sydf7
  • Date Submitted: 02/03/2014 5:08 PM
  • Category: English
  • Words: 1465
  • Page: 6
  • Views: 62

If all the people you loved were taken away from you forever, what would you do? What would you do to keep those memories alive? It was about 6 a.m when the smell of burnt toast filled my room. I slowly opened my eyes, thinking that maybe my parents were making me breakfast. I jumped out of bed and opened the door. A huge cloud of smoke rushed in, almost suffocating me. I didn’t understand what was happening until I saw the orange flames dancing off the walls. My house was on fire. I tried to search in every single room, panicking, but there was no trace of my family. They were gone. When something catastrophic happens and you have to get out fast, leaving behind everything you care about and everything you know, what would you carry?
I carried as many photos of my family members as possible, a few getting lost along the way. My favorite and most cherished picture that I took was of my mother and I when I was about four years old. It was in my jewelry box and I grabbed it as I left my room behind forever. My mother was wearing a multicolored sundress that was balled tightly in my tiny hands. Feeling the silky fabric and following the swirls of rainbow colors with my eyes was hypnotic. I wasn’t letting go. I didn’t want to lose that sensation of love and happiness. But now I’m shaking at the thought of being alone. I wish I had never let go; never let go of that beautiful fabric that once mesmerized me as a child.
I carried my father’s journal, which I grabbed from his study as I ran through the hall. It was filled with his novel ideas and inspiring research of the brain. As I flipped through the yellowed-torn pages, my eyes scanned each and every word, as if I was a robot, programmed to do so. Diagrams of atoms, electrons in subshells, and isotopes filled the weathered pages of his journal. I found passages he had written about life, mostly about his experience meeting my mother and bringing my sister and I into this world. “The people in my life are a...

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