That Day When I Lost Everything; Samuel Lewis (Entry #7)

       

 The street of Samuel Lewis is filled with crowds, cars, and buildings; the only thing that you would say that it does not have is: quiet. Every minute of every day, someone or some family would be passing by; a night worker, a tired student, or a wild party animal. It’s hard to imagine that this is the place where I lost everything; every single thing that a teenager could possibly have—life, love, hope—was stripped away from me. I still remember bits and pieces of that fire; a house burning, screams coming from the kitchen, and agonizing cries from my family members.

         It seems like Panama is the safest spot for me; it meant home, warmth, and love. Panama meant walking under the moonlight with Mom, going to dinners with Dad, and having fights with my big brother. Yet none of that can be available for me anymore. Not ever, anymore. It’s lost forever. I can’t help but remember exactly that day, my thirteenth birthday, when everything was lost.       

         It was my birthday; there were huge presents everywhere—my friends had just gone home from the party, and my family was gathered around to make the last birthday wishes before going to sleep. Mom, putting another candle on top of a cupcake, wishes for me to make another wish in front of them. I smiled, for it was already more than ten times that that ritual has been performed. I wished for an even better birthday, and blew out the candle; then things started happening so fast. I woke up in the middle of the night to get some water, and suddenly I realized that the pathway between my room and other rooms was on fire. Why? I don’t understand and I still don’t. I remembered me screaming out my parents name and my brother’s. I didn’t get a response from their part and I was worried out of my mind, panicked. I tried to grab for the fire extinguisher, but a pathway of flames separated us.

         I remember, screaming out my dad’s name and having no place to back to but the window. I hated myself; how couldn’t I have rushed in to help? Why couldn’t I have done something different? But I did what I did. I crawled out of my window and started to run into the street. There was no sun and a high possibility of bandits out there; yet I was so scared I didn’t care. Half consciously, I remembered not helping my family in the times of need. Why was I so cowardly? I continued with that question until my vision seemed to blur and my eyelids seemed to close. When I woke up, my right arm was burned, and my heart was beating fast; the next thing I knew, I was in Hospital Paitilla, with doctors scurrying past me, and fiddling with needles injected inside my body. I could hear no one, feel nothing. I looked around, but I couldn’t see my parents’ smiling face; I could not see their worried face like the frown they would get when I fracture my leg after a basketball game. It felt like time has frozen and refused to carry on.

         I still remember the horrendous image of the lawyer, asking me if three corpses were my family. They were almost black, with no signs of life whatsoever, and barely familiar. But as I spotted my mom’s wedding ring, my dad’s favorite watch, and my sister’s preppy glasses, I nodded, feeling a lump in my throat. But the worst has yet to come; in the judicial court, my parents’ will have been disputed, and since my parents have always wanted me to earn a life on my own, they wanted to devote their money to charity. But they didn’t anticipate that they were not going to be there for my teenage years. Our distant relatives fought for the inheritance; they threw in the best lawyers just to get that money that I needed so much; yet none of them would reach in and help me.

         I ended up at an orphanage; I kind of blamed my parents for leaving me so early, but I didn’t blame them in some way. My birthday wish had backfired on itself, but I guess someone wants to send me a message, that my life couldn’t get better. I still stare at their pictures in the middle of the night, and remember that day when my last birthday wish was made; I still remember what I had. But it is now all past tense. Twenty years ago, I was that girl, that girl wandering around in Samuel Lewis with the best purses and loving parents. Now I’m a thirty-three-year-old, who’s always thinking about the past and unable to think for herself in the future. I wish that I could’ve cherished the precious things that I had. But now, my pain has not subsided, but the place seems to have forgotten about my tragedy. The streets were long before rebuilt, and the buildings shone with big letters in front and no sign of a burning building, family broken apart, and poverty. It was only when my family died, had I experienced really what losing something is; I could never forget that hopeless feeling that I got when I was sent to the orphanage, a feeling that I thought would never prevail. Yet all that grief, loss, and agony is lost in the streets of Samuel Lewis, leaving not a single trace, but only emptiness and loneliness.