{"id":2283,"date":"2021-11-09T04:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T04:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/writers-house-review\/?page_id=2283"},"modified":"2021-11-09T15:36:35","modified_gmt":"2021-11-09T15:36:35","slug":"god-and-other-things-that-dont-exist","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sites.rutgers.edu\/writers-house-review\/volume-2-fall-2021\/god-and-other-things-that-dont-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"God, And Other Things That Don\u2019t Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Uchenna Agbu<\/em><\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember exactly who told us. I don\u2019t remember what day of the week it was. I don\u2019t remember the time. I don\u2019t remember the weather. I don\u2019t remember what I was doing before the screaming and the chaos and the panic broke out in my living room. I\u2019ve 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\u2019ll tell you what I do<\/em> remember.<\/p>\n

There was a knock at the door. We were surprised because we weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

There was a scream\u2014the 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\u2019t 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\u2019s, a woman my family considers an Aunt.<\/p>\n

As soon as she saw this Aunt, my mother collapsed. She screamed over and over again, \u201cThere is no God.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

I realized then why my Aunt wouldn\u2019t stop knocking. She was coming to tell us something I never thought I’d hear. She was late, but what could she do?\u00a0 My grandfather was dead.<\/p>\n

To this day, I can\u2019t 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\u2019t calm down, no matter what we did to try to help. He could barely breathe. That was the day I learned the word hyperventilation<\/em>. 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, \u201cWhat are we going to do?<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u2014mainly because she had to focus on my brother\u2019s distress. That was the first time I was old enough to recall visiting a hospital, but I don\u2019t 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\u2019s car. My Aunt had a back injury, so she wasn\u2019t supposed to drive at all. I cried for the entire ride, but I made sure I was quiet. We stopped at the McDonald\u2019s 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\u2019t like to eat after crying anymore.<\/p>\n

Shortly after my grandfather\u2019s death, my parents\u2019 marriage began to fall apart. I didn\u2019t 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\u2019 separation. We couldn’t afford to live separately.<\/p>\n

Six months after my grandfather\u2019s 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\u2019t cry. I was mostly upset because I\u2019d 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\u2019t know who let me wear pink. At the end of the ceremony, they walked down the aisle with the casket, and that\u2019s when it happened.<\/p>\n

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\u2019t understand why good people were being taken from me. A woman in the pew behind me comforted me as I sobbed. I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

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\u2019ve realized that many people choose to believe in things that just aren\u2019t true, like happiness, love, and most of all, God.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no God.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

I recall one of my grandfather\u2019s 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, \u201cGod could have made me into anything. I could\u2019ve been an animal, or a bug, or something that doesn\u2019t 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.\u201d He was still grateful, though he knew he couldn\u2019t go anywhere without an oxygen tank and that he was going to die. Those words didn\u2019t mean as much to me at the time as they do now.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n

The answer to these questions is: I don\u2019t know. But as I said before, people can choose to believe in things that just aren\u2019t true. I\u2019m one of those people.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n
Uchenna Agbu<\/strong> is a Theatre Arts major (Class of 2024), with minors in Creative Writing and Human Resource Management. She is from Burlington, New Jersey. At Rutgers, she serves as Membership Chair for the Scarlet NAACP and Director of Alumni Relations for The Livingston Theatre Company. She is a member of Douglass Residential College and is currently completing an internship at Rutgers Center for Women and Work. Outside of writing, she enjoys singing, reading, and watching coming-of-age movies.<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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