As I Breathe (One Breath at a Time: Book 2) (15 page)

“
I am here...let yourself cry, Brielle. Quit trying to be so strong. It’s normal to cry and to grieve.”

“
Why are you so sweet to me? I treated you so terribly since—since—she—” My voice trembled I couldn’t finish my thought.

“
It’s okay Brielle...I am here when you need me.”

I recalculated in those moments that Storm
had
to be an angel—my angel. No human would’ve been able to forgive anyone the way he had forgiven me so many times. The last time we spoke, I had said such deplorable things to him, and I was sure our friendship was gone forever. But, here he was for me when I needed him the most. He knew how to forgive and forget when it came to me.

Almost a year earlier our relationship had taken a turn for the worse. Suddenly, I didn’t care about his stories any longer. I didn’t care about anything. I was a rebel without a cause. All I wanted to do was hangout with my friends, go to parties and drown my teenage growing pains in crowds of people who didn’t know me.

He didn’t like this much, claiming he wanted to keep me out of mischief.
Mischief?
The words he used were so dated. I wondered how old he was, and where on earth was he from? His choice of words was so colloquial at times. Why didn’t he just say, “trouble?”

I begged him to stay out of my personal business, claiming I didn’t need his protection anymore. Now it was Storm tuning me out, and my request fell upon deaf ears. He flat out refused to leave me alone and completely disregarded my pleas. He replied by saying that he was not going anywhere and that he would be with me forever.

How dare he. This was my choice, not his. I was the host of his existence. Without me, he was nothing. I had read that angels are not allowed to supersede your free will, and that instead they are there only to guide their human charges. Therefore, I decided that Storm’s strong will should not and would not come before mine. I was determined that my will would prevail. It would be my way or Heaven’s highway for his lily white ass, assuming he was white.

Still, he always had something to say about everything I did. He didn’t like my choice of music, my lingo or any of my friends, especially the boys. Storm was so green—and not in the sense as in preserving the earth’s resources. When I returned from St. Augustine and started wanting to date boys, he acted as if he was my dad...or even worse, a very jealous boyfriend!

I needed to discuss Storm’s constant interference in my life with someone. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone who could help me. I knew that a conversation with my mother was long overdue, but I couldn’t burden her with my dilemma—she had too many other things to worry about, aside from me.

Perhaps our priest could help; maybe he could do an exorcism to get rid of Storm. But then again, I was sure he would tell my parents—despite his vow of confidentiality. I had no one to talk to. My friends would not understand. Storm was my secret. I was determined to keep the promise that I made to my grandmother to never tell anyone about him—which I kept.

I never told anyone, not even my grandmother that I had actually been conversing with Storm for decades. My grandmother tried to warn me. She told me to just listen to the voices and warned me not to interact with them. It was my own fault for not heeding her warnings.

I should have shared my dilemma with my grandmother while I still had the chance. She would have known how to get rid of Storm’s pestering voice. Unfortunately, my grandmother fell ill to a rapid onset case of dementia. Her condition was heartbreaking to our family.

Our parents didn’t allow my brother and me to see Grandmother once she had taken ill. They wanted us to remember her as she was before her lapsed state of mind. Besides, she no longer remembered who Brett and I were. Half the time she thought my mother was her sister, and the other half of the time she would talk to herself. This scared me to death. I assumed my grandmother was talking to the voices. Of course, my mother never confirmed if she was or not—she avoided any and all spiritual topics as if they were the plague. To her, anything spiritual was nothing more than New Age crap!

I tried once to tell my mother that God himself was a spiritual being. She adamantly remarked, “No, he’s my religion.” This confirmed that there was no going to my mother for advice about Storm. How could I have told her that I’d disobeyed her all those years? It would have crushed her. First Grandmother’s debilitating condition and—to her way of thinking—someday in the not too distant future, her daughter’s life would be destroyed by the same horrible illness.

It’s so easy for a young person to fall prey to irrational fears. I was convinced that Fate had set me upon the same path that my grandmother had traveled and that I would forget every human being in my life as she had, leaving me to suffer alone with no one but the voices. Everyone would be erased from my memory bank…that is everyone but Storm. It was obvious I had the curse. Now I understood my mother’s fair warnings.

Why didn’t I listen to my mother? I felt a sinking hollowness in my soul, knowing that I was destined to lose everyone—every person that I had ever loved. I would forget them all. This rattled me for days, weeks and months. Why should I even bother to love anyone—ever?

I refused to let Storm know the extent of what was bothering me. He assumed it was the news of my grandmother’s illness and, to be honest, most of it was. Still, he sensed something was wrong between us. How could I tell him I feared one day I would lose my memory as my grandmother had? I was convinced that her memory loss happened because she’d talked to the voices, just as my mother claimed. Storm did not know anything about this. His presence in my life weighed on my shoulders. The voices were the curse that plagued our family. I no longer considered hearing them a gift. Thank God, Storm could only hear words that were spoken out loud—both my words and anyone else’s who were around me. If he could have heard my inner thoughts, he would have known that I was planning his demise.

I was so conflicted about what I should do. He lay low during that painful time in my life, which was good for both our sakes.

It’s true, Storm was steadfast and one of the most stable elements in my life. I can admit this. Yes, there were challenging moments with him, and he irked me to the core, but then again, I am sure I got on his nerves as well.
Touché
—I am sure he would agree. But, I liked him, too. Maybe, I even loved Storm in a friendly kind of way. However, if I were going to lose my memory one day because of him—I would eventually have to tell him it was time to go.

The problem here was that I was extremely sentimental. I couldn’t even throw away an old Christmas card from a great aunt that I had never met. So, how in the world could I do this to Storm? After all, he had been my best friend for so long. When I didn’t have anyone, Storm was always there for me. I had a tough decision to make. I didn’t know when I would cut the apron strings from Storm, but I realized the time was near.

***

As I remembered it, Grandmother’s condition worsened with each day that passed. Not only was her state of mind suffering, her health was waning rapidly too. The voices were the only ones that she spoke to in the end. I was angry and needed to blame someone—anyone.

Naturally, I blamed the angels. It was their fault this was happening. Storm’s fault! It was time. He had to leave my head. I didn’t care what it took, psychotherapy drugs, hypnotism, or even electric shock treatment—wait—scratch anything to do with electricity plummeting through my brain. I feared that I would end up living my life out in a padded room. I wondered if I could cut Storm out of my head. Only a small incision that was nothing too extreme. Most likely, this would not work either. This was his fault,
no
, my fault for dabbling in things I was warned not to.

I felt like I had to get rid of him. I would miss Storm greatly, but the reasons to let him go were insurmountable now. I could not be tied to this inevitable curse anymore; I had to get rid of him!

I prayed for the first time in years. “Lord, have mercy on me.” I did not want to end up in a nursing home like my sweet grandmother had. What could I do? It was all too devastating to think about.

Several weeks later my grandmother passed away; it was the last day of summer. I was sixteen years old, and it felt like my life had ended, too. It might as well have. I never got the chance to say good-bye to her. That broke my heart. She had always been my confidante, my partner in crime and she understood me better than anyone.

I began to question, more so than ever, whether the voice within my head was even an angel at all. What if he was a part of a master plan to take us all over? What if there were other people walking about with voices in their heads, and they too just didn’t talk about them out of fear of being ridiculed?

One night I dreamed that everybody in the city of New York was walking around numb, out of control, and talking to themselves. It seemed so real that I woke on the verge of a scream, my entire body trembling uncontrollably and with tears streaming from my eyes, The dream magnified my fears of going insane and spurred an even greater desperation to be rid of the source of my terror.

In retrospect, I wanted to believe that Storm was an angel as Grandmother had said, but what if her theory was wrong? Storm was not always angelic. At times, I felt he was the devil’s advocate, a real control freak and the master of my universe. Still, I had doubts.

***

After my Grandmother passed away, I sank into a deep depression. My parents reassured my brother and me that she was in a better place, Heaven. I believed in the afterlife, too, and that we go to a better place, but it didn’t comfort me as it should have. The empty space that my grandmother’s death left in my heart would never cease. She was my hero, and I missed her more than anything. Time had not eased the void that ached in the deepest part of my heart since she’d been gone.

I cursed the voices for taking my grandmother’s life. I blamed anyone I could, and I didn’t acknowledge Storm for over nine weeks. I remember this well because Karma had given birth to her
fourth
litter during this time. I could not find solace, so, as a result I completely ignored Storm.

***

Months had passed by before I finally worked up the courage to visit my grandmother’s old farmhouse in Connecticut. It was Thanksgiving Day, and as it turned out, it was the last time I would ever visit the home that was such a special place in my youth.

I felt the presence of Storm near, lingering in the depths of my mind. What a forgiving soul he was to be there to comfort me, despite my bitter angst toward him and his heavenly world.

I held onto the single petal that had fallen from the flower. It was soft, fresh and felt like velvet between my fingers, which comforted me, too. There was still the essence of my grandmother’s life in the room. It was ever so quiet. I stared for the longest time into the stream of sunlight that bounced off the objects in her home. I remembered taking naps with her and waking up to the same sunlight beaming on our faces. Now, it seemed so remote and filled with those tiny dust fairies. Where does the life go when the dust settles?

Dad brought in a pile of logs and stacked them in the large fireplace. After he built a toasty fire, he left me there alone to make my peace. Sitting near the hearth, my eyes were heavy as I gazed into the burning embers. My vision blurred, hypnotized by the orange flickers of light.

A mental image of my grandmother’s crystal blue eyes, her delicate smile, materialized. I could almost hear her voice, her whispers
—I love you so much.
Before my eyes, a vision manifested, her tender hands knitting together, in a peaceful rhythm, the precious shawl that still keeps me warm on cold winter nights.

The air shifted in the room as the wind kicked hard against the old farmhouse’s tattered facade. The powerful gust caused the little French window in the corner of the room to push open. Jolted from my reverie by a gust of icy wind, I scurried to shut the window, pausing at the sight outside. The snow was thickening, and it was breathtaking. One perfect snowflake landed into the palm of my hand, then slowly melted away. A chill passed through me as I closed the weathered window frame.

Quickly, I cuddled up into the delicate rocker near the fireplace where my grandmother would read for hours. Draped on the back of the chair was the crotchet blanket that she had made. I pulled it down and covered myself from head to toe.

As I gazed into the flames, one of my fondest memories of her returned. Grandmother used to keep a journal by her bedside. Without fail, each night before sleep she would write the day’s events and letters to her beloved late husband, my grandfather Stephen. Having witnessed her nightly ritual is what inspired me to want to write too, but for a living. She’d shared with me that writing letters to my grandfather was comforting and made her feel close to him.

Every time I’d spent the night with her, she torn her nightly entry from the journal, then folded it perfectly into the shape of paper wings and tossed it high into the air, saying, “Grandpa’s going to love reading about the day we had.” She’d then kissed me on the forehead.

We sat quietly watching as the wings settled to the floor. She believed her angel would use the paper wings to fly into heaven and deliver her message to my grandfather Stephen to read. Where the wings landed she’d leave them there and sure enough to my surprise they’ll be gone by the morning. Of course, as I matured I realized she must have retrieved the wings from the floor in the middle of the night but it was a sweet memory Grandmother created between us.