20, 2008 went by fast in the rainy and moist air of the lake. I was sitting at my desk, finishing up my homework, when my mother’s cell began to ring. I glance quickly at it, the screening saying: George Franklyn. I answered it because it was my father.

“Hello?” I asked.

“Hello is Mrs. Franklyn there? We have news about her son and her husband,” I knew then and there, that something had to be deadly wrong. Sounds of sirens, and the ambulance hinted something. I was speechless; minutes must have passed.

“Hello? Is Mrs. Franklyn there?” asked the police officer.

“No, sorry. She is busy. Can I take a message? I am her oldest daughter, Erin.”

“Your brother and father just a suffered a major car crash. They have been rushed to the hospital. Your dad was found breathing, your brother unconscious. Can you please tell your mother that she and the children need to come to South Plain Hospital?”

“I will give… the message,” I replied, hanging up after the officer gave me the address.


I cried the entire way to the hospital. My mother was in tears as she gave the nurse at the desk her name and the name of Mark and my father.

“Level 3, rooms 139 and 140. Take the elevator, it will save time,” demanded the nurse answering the nearest phone.

Pushing in the elevator button was probably one of the hardest things I could do. Hardly did anyone know that I was saddened. I was never the one to be sorrowful.

We rode up, silent and impatient to see them. Down the hall to the left, down another hall, turning left again, finally to be at the rooms. That was the longest walk also of my life. What I saw and heard next changed my life. What I experienced had to be the most painful event of my 14 years.

There in the bed of white sheets was my injured father. Breathing, but hooked up to a few machines, and alive. He smiled a weak smile, forcing a finger in the direction of the door. “Erin, Mark is not well. Go see him.”

I was surprised, shocked, but suddenly getting up from the chair I had just then found myself in, walking to the door. “I shall.” Then I left my father’s room with tears in my eyes.

I focused on the doorknob of my brother’s room, and in only ten feet, I would be there. As I opened the door, I saw Mark, limp and weak; he was scarred already, bleeding, but wrapped. A lined unevenly on his arms was bruises, cuts, and deep wounds. Wrapped around his head was a bunch of cloth. Guessing that he had to have had been hit hard enough in the head, he was diagnosed with internal concussion. “Was the hit that hard? Or was the car that ramped them aiming at his side?” I thought out loud, speaking my mind to someone who was not even awake.

I sat there holding my older brother’s bruised hands, and for hours was I praying for a miracle. Finally out of those hours of dead silence came a rapid beeping. Nurses rushed in, pushing me gently out of the way. I cried, knowing something bad was happening.

The doctor had called in my mother in seconds. Tears filled her eyes, her making starting to smear. “He has gone in to a comma,” yelled the doctor.
. “Erin, are you okay?” She paused, “My poor baby!” She wept all night by his side like me.
But for him the morning never came.

Now with them laying him in the grave, I come to wonder, if he is going to a better place. I have made an internal peace maker with my self. I let go then and there that Mark was not in pain.
Walking with my dad back to the car, I came only to shed one tear; I had made peace with a close death.


Come to me my love, do you now fly.
Come to me my love, you shall never die.