When I awoke the next morning...
I was alone...
Even as I knew it to be true I didn't want to believe it.
In less than twenty four hours I had gone from being a husband and father to being alone. Now, with the bite of coming snow in the air I was forced to turn my thoughts from the care of my family to laying them to rest.
How does one begin to accept that those very people that made you look forward to whatever the day might bring were no longer there?
I traveled through the next few days in a daze, entering the rubble that had been our home in search of the treasured doll and teddybear that would be laid to rest with their young owners. I can't begin to describe what it was like as I stepped over the remnants of the crib that had held my young son prisoner knowing he had died under the debris. To once more face the scene of my own failure, the blood of my wife and daughter still too fresh in it's presence. All the while remaining aware that even as I saw it as such I had done all that I could despite my inability to accept that fact.
There was nowhere in those days to find comfort, the Church my wife had loved seemed in my eye to have betrayed them and I wanted nothing they tried to offer. Grief consumed me and I might have been a dead man myself as I existed in the fog of it, all the while wondering what I had done to deserve life while theirs were stripped from them.
When the time came to lay all three to their final rest it seemed only fitting that the snows came, the tears of rain as frozen as my heart now seemed. I was alone, and all those who gave me reason to live were gone.
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