Prologue

       “She was my hero.”
       I could still see her face in my mind as those words left my lips. I looked at the people in front of me whose eyes were filled with sorrow. Most of them I had no clue who they were, but they talked to me as though they raised me as a child.

       “She lived life like there was no care in the world. She told me she would never understand adults...but she was thirty two.” I let out a brief chuckle. Memories of her came flying back to me as I continued to talk about her bubbly self.

       I hadn't yet come to realize her death. The doctors told me that she died in a car accident.
       “'I'll never leave you,' she would say, 'Even if I'm gone away from this earth, I will never leave you.'” I recited.

       Funerals were so dull; I didn't know why people would come. Is it to look at a soulless, empty body? I would never understand. I turned at the casket and imagined her face under the casket....her young, beautiful face. Her long, luscious, blonde hair flowing down to her mid-back. Her childlike features on her face, her smile and laugh, and her bright blue eyes. She was truly gorgeous, and I would always be jealous of her.

       “I loved to listen to her talk to me. So many people complained about how immature she was....but, truly, she was wise beyond her years, and I loved her for it,” she explained, “She always held her head high.”

       I took a deep breath, turned my face to the sky, and said a temporary goodbye to my dead mother.