It’s been five years, my daughter has only known dirt, no plants, just dirt. Today we found a little green blade of grass still as fresh as a rose. Not that roses are fresh anymore. The food we have been eating has been expired and all made before it happened, there has been no plants to grow any new food. With all this struggle we managed to survive, and seeing this blade of grass with my daughter. It’s given me hope and realization that our world is being rebuilt. As we were sitting there crouched over our little blade of hope, it started to rain. I don’t think either of us cared one bit though, because we just got up and started dancing, I can’t believe it either,but we were smiling It wasn’t one of those smiles of pity like when we finally found a new canned dinner, or when I brought home some new worn out cloth to use as a blanket. No, this smile on me and my daughters face was genuine, I feel bad for all the people who died before today and didn’t get to enjoy our little blade of hope.

She was about to get into the car. I would never see her again. So I had to say it. “ I love you!” She turned around, tears still in her eyes from our goodbye just moments earlier. “ I can’t let you go, I love you so much and I always have! Please don’t go I’ll miss you. I’ll miss the way we take our morning walks together, I’ll miss the way you sigh when I make a joke telling me that it’s not funny but laugh anyways. A real laugh. I am going to miss the way we always greet each other at the fence with a hello neighbor pretending like we are complete strangers. And in that moment I can relive the very first time I laid my eyes on you and fell in love! Please don’t go.” She didn’t say anything, she just stared into my hoping eyes. “Im sorry, I have to go, but…” she paused thinking of the ways to say the next sentence, “I don’t want our last goodbye to be a lie so I am just going to say it, I don’t love you back. I’ve always thought of you as a part of my family but not as my husband but my brother, I’m sorry if that’s disappointing but I have to go.” And with that she got in the car and left.

I never saw her again.

All my life I have thought that death would just happen and come upon us if we got to old, I never imagined it could have happened when we were young. And that’s why today I vowed not to die, to do whatever I could until couldn’t, because after she died I realized that people need to live there lives. Instead of dying and not.