“Wh-why did she have to leave us!” My eight year old brother Felix sobs.

I bend down and gently wipe away the tears streaming down his face. As I pat his back soothingly, I catch a reflection of myself in the glass building behind us. Under my eyes there are almost purpleish dark circles. Stress lines crease my forhead together and make me look twenty years older than I am. My mother’s death had taking a toll on me. I turn my head away and focus my attention on my brother.

“It’s going to be okay, everyone leaves for a reason, remember?” I say to him in a comforting tone, trying to calm him down.

“What’s her reason then!” He exclaims angrily, slapping the hand away that was stroking his hair.

“It was time for her to go. She was in the hospital for so long Felix, the doctors kept giving her medicine and making her do surgery which made her body weaker than it was before.” I reply. Though I didn’t want to lie to him, it was already a half truth when I began. Our mother had a deadly diesease that was poisoning her body from the indside. You couldn’t suspect she was even dying based off of her bright eyes and warm skin. The doctors caught it too late, and there was nothing else they could do. It was either she die in incredible pain after countless of surgeries, or die right then, where she could rest in peace.

Of course, she chose the second option. I didn’t blame her, but since our father was a “one night stand” and we had never known him, and our grandparents had died long ago, there was no one to take us in. Our aunts and uncles pretended they couldn’t because they already had children and it was too expensive to take care of two more, but I knew that they didn’t want us because we were just another reminder of her. I inherited her long black hair and gentle personality, while Felix inherited her dark blue eyes and fair skin.

“Wha-what are we going to do now then.” He asks me in a soft voice, quietly snuffling. I look towards the man in the black business suit who was my mother’s colleague, but he’s on the phone with the orphanage. Orphanage. The word rings through my head over and over again, and I have to tell myself to stop it or I would go crazy.

“It’s going to be hard, but we’re going to get through this.” I say firmly to him, realizing that nothing I could say would convince him we’d be okay. We wouldn’t ever stop grieving over our mother’s death, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It changed us, and for the better or worse, we’re completely different people then we were before now.

“And you know what?” I say to him, grabbing his hand and squeezing it softly.

His sniffles stop as he runs a sleeve over his runny nose and wipes his eyes full of unshed tears. I can tell he’s trying to be strong for both his and my sake.

“What?” He asks me in a louder voice than when he talked before.

“We’re going to get through this all, together.”