Aurora 2024

Aliyah Orten

The Calamity

It is March of 2020, the beginning of what is later known as the pandemic saga. It is midnight and I just told my parents I was going to bed for the night. As I begin to get comfortable, I hear my mom run into the dining room and relay a message to my father. She tells him that something has happened to my grandfather, her father, and my aunt said we need to go to my grandparents’ house immediately. I hear this and instantly sling myself out of bed to ask if I can join them. My brother and I are in the backseat while my father drives with my mother in the passenger seat. I sit behind my mom, hearing her quickened breath and seeing her fear exude out from her soul. The unknown is scary, no matter the circumstances, but that moment when you realize the moment may be approaching when you lose a parent for the first time, is unexplainable until you’re living through it. We arrive at Eighth Street. I see police cars in and the front door of my grandparents’ only home wide open. The only home I have ever seen them consume. The home where my mother graduated high school from, brought her first child home too, and the first home my parents lived in together. My parents jump out of the truck and tell us to stay seated until told otherwise. My eyes follow their every move. Neither my brother nor I speak

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