Newspaper inspired Writing

                                                                        Just Look

             Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our selves and our own lives that we forget to open our eyes and just look. It's so easy to forget to pay attention to the smallest changes in people around us, and one day the realization that something is up with them will smack us in the face...hard.
            This is what happened with my mom. I don't know how or why she started going down the dark and  lonely path she did. She used to be so bubbly and charming- always the center of attention. She could light up a room. She was a nurse and my dad is a cop, so she knew first hand what the consequences of her actions would be, yet she still continued down that dark road.
           At first, I never noticed a difference. I mean, she was gone more often, but she had said that her hours had picked up at work. It was flu season after all. Looking back on it, she was more irritable and there was just something off about her most of the time. There were a hundred signs that something was wrong, but I had overlooked every one. But, I was a little girl at the time, it was my first year of middle school and everyone knows how rough that is.
            It wasn't until we went on a family vacation that I noticed any changes, and they were major. I dismissed my thoughts though because it was a vacation, and you re supposed to relax. Maybe drinking was her way of letting loose.
            After that vacation, My dad knew something was wrong too. He told my little sister and I that mom had some problems that she needed to take care of, and she couldn't do that with him or us. They were getting divorced. Whatever this issue was, it was serious. My dad loved her with all of his heart, it didn't make sense that he'd give up so easy.
             I didn't see much of my mom after the divorce. She only got supervised visits once a week. She was getting skinnier every time I saw her. She had always been thin, but now it was a scary kind of skinny. Her hygiene was poor too. It upset me to see her like this. But, as the weeks went by, she stopped visiting.
           A couple years have passed since the divorce when my dad calls my sister and I over to talk to him. His expression was emotionless, but his eyes were puffy and red like he had been crying. He used a soft tone when he told us that our mother was dead. It was a drug overdose.
            The saddest part was that she was so unhealthy and unclean that she wasn't recognizable. She was cremated. I didn't even get to see my mother one last time before she was buried. I try and remember her for who she was before the drugs took her from us, but most times I can't. The memories of us as a family before all of this happened are blurry. I can only imagine how my little sister feels, for she has even fewer memories of our mom. The part that hurts the most is the fact that all of this could have been prevented if someone had just taken a second and looked at the smallest changes in my mom at the beginning. Maybe this wouldn't have turned out this way.