Looking Back by Deborah A. Upton

I had noticed how Evelyn treated me in front of everyone, mainly how cold she was toward me, but I didn’t say anything about it, even later when we were alone. I just figured it was something that occurred between sisters, once in a while. But when the phone rang early the next morning waking my husband and me, it shocked me to hear that my sister had taken her own life. No one had prepared me. It’s strange how you look back for clues, telling yourself you should have seen more. Maybe I would have if I had remembered when I was three years old how my Aunt Ellen slit her wrist and bled all over the stairs as she came down to die on the floor in front of the couch where Uncle Bobby slept. No one talked about it ever again after her funeral, Momma told me, as I cried for my sister. But it was when I was told that my grandfather, who had died long before I was born, had committed suicide by hanging himself from a limb of the tall cottonwood tree on the back acres of his farm that I began to see the pattern. I’ve always dreamed of being beneath the water watching the sun’s rays penetrating my world where I am hidden. I wonder if Evelyn was hidden in her own world when she swallowed the pills that took her away.

.

Return to This Week’s Flash