God, And Other Things That Don’t Exist

Uchenna Agbu

I don’t remember exactly who told us. I don’t remember what day of the week it was. I don’t remember the time. I don’t remember the weather. I don’t remember what I was doing before the screaming and the chaos and the panic broke out in my living room. I’ve been told that this is due to memory loss caused by depression. I find that odd because people always say you remember every detail of a tragic day, whether you know a tragedy is going to strike or not. Nowadays, my memory only works when it decides to. But I’ll tell you what I do remember.

There was a knock at the door. We were surprised because we weren’t expecting anyone. My parents were pretty antisocial. They still are, for the most part. It was rare for someone to be invited to our home. Because of that, the knock was ignored. We turned off the TV and waited for the uninvited visitor to leave. A few seconds later, the stranger knocked again. This time more frantically.

Next, a phone rang. My mom went into the next room to answer it and my older brother followed her. My sister and I sat in silence, for fear that the person knocking would hear us speak.

There was a scream—the first of many. My sister and I ran into the next room to see what was going on. My mother was screaming and crying, her body held up by my brother. Her phone was on the floor with a call still on the screen. I started to cry. I don’t know why. I still had no idea what had happened. I stood motionless in front of my mother as she continued to scream and cry, her eyes red and her face a mask of despair. When she finally managed to stand on her own, my brother answered the door. It turned out that the visitor was no stranger at all. It was a friend of my mother’s, a woman my family considers an Aunt.

As soon as she saw this Aunt, my mother collapsed. She screamed over and over again, “There is no God.”

I realized then why my Aunt wouldn’t stop knocking. She was coming to tell us something I never thought I’d hear. She was late, but what could she do?  My grandfather was dead.

To this day, I can’t decide who took the news worse, my mother or my older brother. My brother cried that day, the first time I saw him do that. My sister seemed too shocked to do anything but cry silently, like me. My Aunt spent her time trying to calm down my brother and my mother. I remember my sister getting water for my brother to drink. He couldn’t calm down, no matter what we did to try to help. He could barely breathe. That was the day I learned the word hyperventilation. I watched him cry. I watched his hands grip onto the leather couch that my family has had for years. I heard him ask over and over again, “What are we going to do?”

I remember someone dialing 911. It must have been my Aunt. I remember the ambulance coming to our house and the medics asking what I thought was too many questions. All I needed was for them to help my brother. I think I started to hyperventilate, too. My panic led me to believe I would lose two people in one day.

My brother and my mom rode in the ambulance while my Aunt drove me and my sister to the hospital. By this point, my mom had calmed down—mainly because she had to focus on my brother’s distress. That was the first time I was old enough to recall visiting a hospital, but I don’t remember much except the expensive bills that came afterward. My father picked my brother up from the hospital. My mom ended up driving back in my Aunt’s car. My Aunt had a back injury, so she wasn’t supposed to drive at all. I cried for the entire ride, but I made sure I was quiet. We stopped at the McDonald’s near our house because my Aunt offered to treat us. As if lukewarm chicken nuggets could make me feel any better. Regardless, she bought them and I ate them. I don’t like to eat after crying anymore.

Shortly after my grandfather’s death, my parents’ marriage began to fall apart. I didn’t know why, but I could hear it in the yelling and I could see it when my mom started sleeping in a different bedroom. We all lived in the same house for years after my parents’ separation. We couldn’t afford to live separately.

Six months after my grandfather’s death, the Priest at the church my family attended had a heart attack. We all expected to see him that night at Mass, but the Mass started off with the announcement of his death. It was Christmas Eve. I was shocked, but I didn’t cry. I was mostly upset because I’d never got the chance to altar serve with him. I went to his funeral with my brother and my father. I wore a frilly pink dress with a black jacket and my hair pulled back. I don’t know who let me wear pink. At the end of the ceremony, they walked down the aisle with the casket, and that’s when it happened.

I cried. And I was loud. Nothing inside of me wanted to hold it in, so nothing inside of me tried to. I cried because I couldn’t understand why good people were being taken from me. A woman in the pew behind me comforted me as I sobbed. I don’t know who she was and I never found out. I want to thank her for helping me without knowing me. I pray for more people like her to exist.

2012 was supposed to be the end of the world. For me it was. It only takes a few minutes for a life to change, and mine has never been the same since. There are so many ideas in this world, bright ones and dull ones alike. We choose what to believe in and we choose what to denounce. I’ve realized that many people choose to believe in things that just aren’t true, like happiness, love, and most of all, God.

“There is no God.”

I recall one of my grandfather’s last birthdays. Just as he was getting ready to blow out his candles, he said something I thought was pretty profound. He was a writer and had always had a way with words. He said, “God could have made me into anything. I could’ve been an animal, or a bug, or something that doesn’t breathe. But I was lucky enough to live as a human and spend my life with you all. I am grateful for my life today and every day.” He was still grateful, though he knew he couldn’t go anywhere without an oxygen tank and that he was going to die. Those words didn’t mean as much to me at the time as they do now.

There are still so many questions, though. If happiness exists, why do I still feel the pain I first felt when I was ten years old? If love exists, why would my parents decide to leave each other? And if God exists, why would He take the two people I knew who loved Him most?

The answer to these questions is: I don’t know. But as I said before, people can choose to believe in things that just aren’t true. I’m one of those people.