When my mum answered the phone she fell down on her knees. She looked just like a small child. I'd never seen her not be brave but I was only eleven. I remember it as a winter's day, even though it was November. It rained inside my house, my mother's eyes replaced the sky. And when she finally said that he was dead I felt like she had drowned me. I spent the night at the family computer googling heroin. And I wished that I could take his place because my mum already has three daughters and she needed her brother. I felt the inside of my brain change from innocent to grown. The world had stopped, the colours dulled and I was expected to keep going. And there he was everywhere, haunting me in my teenage bedroom. Grief is a bad tattoo you get when things are kind of blurry—a permanent reminder of my mother screaming. And now I'm almost twenty-four and I've lived several lives, but I've found grief has stuck around as my most loyal friend. Because I can't forget the day he died and the way my mother looked. I'll spend my life as an eleven-year-old child drowning in my mother's tears.

 

© Mabel Gibson. From Ourselves: 100 Micro Memoirs published by Night Parrot Press. 

 

Mabel is a Yamatji writer from Albany (Kinjarling) who hopes one day to become a publisher and provide opportunities for other First Nations writers.  

 

www.nightparrotpress.com