Goodbye Annie

I'm using your real name here because you are dead.

That still sounds wrong.

How can a seven year old bundle of energy, always yelling and dancing in circles around our grandmother's kitchen, possibly be gone? How can a little bit of blood let loose in the brain destroy so much so quickly? How can there be death that is so utterly unpreventable, so entirely beyond our control?

There is nothing I can do to make it better, nothing I can do to staunch the wound. The family bleeds.

The tiny fractions call endlessly, searching for reprieve, searching for news. I know nothing.

The funeral is on Saturday. It is a funeral for a girl still living.

How can her glassy eyes be truly real?