NATASHA’S DEATH
Lisa Jiang
Lisa Jiang Words Checked : 3579
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Content P1
About the author...................................p 3 Synopsis………………………………P 4 Chapter 1...............................................p 5 Chapter 2.............................................p 14 Chapter 3.............................................p 24 Chapter 4.............................................p 35 Chapter 5.............................................p 46 Acknowledgement page......................p 48
About the Author
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Lisa Jiang, wrote this story, when she was a five year college student. She wrote the story at the time she was eighteen years old. Since her father died, she has started to think about life and death. This story is what she thinks about life and death. She believes that there’s nothing to fear about death. What people need to be afraid of is that they don’t even know they have lived and what they live for. Synopsis P3
Have you ever talked to Death? Death is actually not as horrible as you think. It was on my birthday, the date I was born and died. I met him, the Death. He saved the innocent me and taught me lessons about life and love. My life changed.
Chapter1 P4
I had an unbelievable experience when I was fourteen year old. I have tried many times to tell as many friends as I could, but nobody believed me. They all said the story was made up by me, but it was not. How could I make the story up on my own? However, until now, I still can not tell if the story did happen in reality or if it was just a dream, but I will never forget the boy until the night I myself die. I remembered it happened on my
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birthday, the date I was born and the day I died.
I had been looking forward to my birthday for many months. Since my sister, Louisa, had a good birthday celebration, I had imagined how my birthday would be for quite a long time. I do believe I should have a good birthday celebration as hers. Perhaps I would get as many presents as she had got or even more than that. I knew all of my families members would
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celebrate my birthday as good as they could. I would have cake, and they would sing “Happy Birthday� for me just like they did to Louisa. I really thought so at that time. However, things just do not always happen in the way we want. My birthday was destroyed by Louisa, the one whom I like and also the one I hate the most. That afternoon, when I went home, mom was in the kitchen cooking dinner. Grandma and grandpa were sitting in the store waiting for Louisa.
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My brother, Alex, was not at home, but I guess he was out looking for my birthday cake. He always knew what my favorite flavor was. “Mom, what do we have tonight?” I asked, but mom didn’t hear me because it was too noisy in the kitchen. I looked at the food on the table and noticed most of the prepared food was my favorite. “Mom, thank you. I love you,” I said. Unfortunately, she still did not hear me, but that was Ok. Maybe I could tell her later. I smiled.
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A few minutes later, Louisa had returned. She was very happy and told mom she did well on her exam that day. Mom was very happy about that and told her, “You did a good job and keep going.� Good grades again. She always got good grades. That was nothing special. Sometimes I wondered if she just wanted to show off to me. I knew I was not good at studying and I am not as smart as her, but I was already trying my best to get good grades. I did think I studied harder
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than Louisa. I have never known why my mom and my grandparents could only see her good grades, but not my striving. Never mind. I was used to it. Later, Alex had returned, too. However, there was nothing in his hands. No cake! “Where were you?” Alex looked at me, “Playing basketball with my friends,” he said. Very disappointed, I walked into kitchen and stood beside my mom.
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“Mom, today is my birthday,” I said. She didn’t stop, but just said, “Oh! Really? Happy birthday.” That is all? “Mom, uh… ” Are we going to have any celebration tonight? This February, I mean on Louisa’s birthday, we all celebrated together. Today…” Mom did not say anything, and I knew that there was no possibility for my birthday celebration.
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I went back to my room and took out five hundred dollar bigoted. I wanted to buy a cake for myself. I went to a bakery alone and bought a cake and a drink for myself. “If they did not want to celebrate my birthday, at least I could do it myself,� I thought with tears filling in my eyes. Other than this, I did not know what else I could do for myself. Suddenly, I saw a car drove toward me. The car was driving so fast that I
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could not get out of its way. I was hit and unconscious after the crash. Now, I still remembered, at that moment, I was thinking, “will someone cry for my death?� I guess not.
Chapter2
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I had a dream. A dream about what had happened before. Once when I was very little, Alex was sick. He had a fever but was still elfish. At first, he took away my ruler without telling me. After I found out, I told this to Louisa and we took away Alex’s pencil case and hid it in a secret place where Alex could never find it as revenge. At that age, we always did these things. When grandpa saw that, he seldom told us not to do that. However, he was
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very angry that day. I don’t know why he was so angry. When he heard Louisa and I had taken away Alex’s pencil case, he shouted at us angrily and asked us to return the pencil case to Alex. Because Alex took away my pen first and had not returned it yet, Louisa refused to return Alex’s pencil case. “If you don’t return it to Alex immediately, I will punish you,” grandpa said scornfully and he was looking for a stick. Louisa and I were scared. We started to run. We ran though
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the house and grandpa was running after us. We could not stop. We ran from front to back, from the first floor to the fourth floor. Eventually, we hid on the fourth floor, a place where we enshrine Bodhisattva. We both guessed grandpa would not hit us in front of Bodhisattva. It was silent there. It was cold and dark. There, we could clearly hear the sounds made by grandpa. He was looking for us room by room. We could hear him opening the closet door and then shut it
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down. I could imagine how angry he was. A few minutes later, Louisa turned to me and told me, “Listen, I will go down stairs, and you just stay here until grandpa leaves.” And she walked down stairs. When I walked downstairs, I saw there were a few marks on Louisa’s leg, and some of them were bleeding. Louisa was crying. I felt guilty. Since this event happened, I realized I was the most undesired child in the family. Because Louisa was the oldest among three kids,
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Mom paid much more attention to her. My grandparents loved Alex very much because he was the youngest and also the only boy in our family. Who loved me? Nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me. I was wondering if there would be someone who would care about whether I was alive or not. I opened my eyes. It was not my room and also not my home. I was in the hospital. All my family members were around me crying. The scene was just like
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the time my father died. I was very little then, but I could dimly remember the day my grandparents and my mom knew about his death and what things happened during his funeral. Everyone was looking at my father and crying. I tried to touch Mom’s shoulder, but I could not. My hand went though her body. I looked at my hand, and it was transparent. I was scared. It seemed something terrible had happened to me. I tried to call my mom, Louisa and Alex. I wanted to tell them I was fine. I wanted to
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tell them not to cry. Unfortunately, nobody heard me. I stood up and stepped down the sickbed and jumped in front of them. However, nobody found me. They just kept crying and looked on the sickbed. LOOK ON THE SICKBED! I turned around and saw something amazing. I saw myself lying on the sickbed, eyes closed and badly mutilated. While I saw this, I could not even say a word. I was dead. “Hey, girl, why are you so sad?� I
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heard a sound say to me from the ceiling. I raised my head. There was a boy flying above my head. “Who are you?” I asked. “Me?” he smiled. “Who am I is not important. I always show in different way in to different people. The most common way people call me is Death. Sometimes, people call me opportunity. How you call me is all up to how you know me, but you can call me Sean if you like. This name sounds beautiful.”
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“Sean?” “Yeah. Sean. What are you crying for?” he asked. “I died,” I said. “I still have a lot to do. I haven’t enjoyed my life. I’ve never had a boyfriend. I haven’t made my dreams come true. I haven’t told my mom I love her. I am just 14 years old. I don’t want to die,” I cried. Sean touched my head. I knew he wanted to comfort me, but it just didn’t work. I couldn’t stop crying.
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“I know you are sad,” he said, “but you have to face the facts. You are dead.” I knew I had to, but I just couldn’t.
Chapter 3
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A few days passed. It was the first month after the accident. These days were the hardest time I have ever experienced. I believed nobody could have experienced what I was feeling inside. Have you ever been in the hospital, seen yourself being given CPR, and then seen the doctor walking out of the curtain and announcing your death? It was cruel and bitter. “Sean, why am I still here?� I asked. Sean looked at me, smiled and said,
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“Where are you going?” “Well… I don’t know. I thought maybe people would go to another world after they die, wouldn’t they?” Sean smiled. “Am I right? If not, why aren’t there any other spirits staying in the world like us?” Sean kept smiling and said, “Do you want to see how your classmates, friends and family members are?” “Huh?”
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“I said do you want to see your friends and family members?” “Can I?” I asked. He nodded his head. “Sure!” I shouted. This was the first time I saw my classmates since the accident happened. There was only an empty seat in the classroom. It was my seat. I went to my seat and sat sown. I pretended I was still alive and listening to the class lecture. My best friend, Samantha, was very down. I could feel there was a sad atmosphere
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filling the classroom. The class was very different from before. There was less laughing and less joking in the class. I walked to my locker, and there were a lot of cards for me and my photos. I know that was for me, but I would rather those things had never appeared. Sean and I went to my home after school. Everyone was sitting near my coffin in the living room. “My coffin.” What a strange word for me. I was still there. I didn’t feel I was dead. Perhaps, I
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should try to get used to this new situation. In the house, I saw my mom’s eyes were red. From her eyes, I could imagine how many days she hadn’t slept well. She looked tired and exhausted. She was much thinner and older since I had died. “Mom, I am sorry,” I said to her touching her weak shoulder, although she couldn’t see me nor feel my touch at all. Louisa and Alex were at home, too. I was surprised at that. They should be in
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school or a cram school. Maybe my death was a good excuse for them to be at home. I knew they hated school very much. They always went to school as late as they could and returned home as fast as they possible I went to their room. They were studying from their school books. I was quite surprised that they were not playing computer games. That’s Alex’s favorite. I bet there’s nothing more important than playing computer games for Alex. “Alex, what are you doing?” asked
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Louisa. “Studying,” Alex said. “No, you aren’t.” “Yes, I am.” “You look absent-minded.” “And you do, too.” Then they were both silent. “Louisa, I miss Natasha so much. She was really kind to us,” said Alex. “Yeah, I miss her too. Maybe we should have treated her better before.” “Yeah.”
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A few days later, I started getting used to being as a ghost. I mean not being seen or heard by anyone. Sometimes, it was quite fun to be a ghost. Sean and I could freely do whatever we liked and say whatever we wanted, such as lying on the street or railway and enjoyed the feeling when we were run over by cars without pain. Believe it or not, being run through by cars was really much more exciting than taking a roller coaster. Sometimes,
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we would play stupid games like that. We imagined that we were thieves and were being chased by the police which were the cars in reality. We were running from one side of the street to the other. We ran and shouted loudly, and nobody could blame us for it. We both lay down on the street when we were tired. It was a very leisurely life. I had never been so happy for a long time. Maybe dying was not so bad for me because at least now I could have something fun here.
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“Sean, how long have you lived like this?” I asked. “I can’t remember. I’ve lived this way for quite a long time,” He said running through a wall. “Do you know what we will be in the future?” “Future? I don’t know. I haven’t met future since I became this.” “So you mean everything will be the same way forever?” “Well… not exactly. Things are
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always changing, right?� Things are always changing? I totally agreed with Sean now, but I didn’t understand this at that time. It was too deep for a thirteen year old girl to understand.
Chapter 4
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It was the fifteenth day after I died which was the day after my funeral. This was a weird experience. I attended my own funeral. My family, my friends, and also all my classmates were there. Nobody was missing. It was a rainy day. Sean and I were sitting in the last row and watching the whole ceremony take place. The decoration was very beautiful. There were many lilies around my picture but I preferred something simpler. I looked at
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my photo. I was smiling so happy in the photo. Who could believe that this cute girl was no longer alive? I looked at my mom. She was exhausted. She was much older than the last time that I saw her. She was not crying. She was too tired to cry. I suddenly felt I was so cruel to her. She had just gotten used to living without my father and now had to accept the fact that her daughter was dead. I am afraid she couldn’t take it anymore, but she was so
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brave. She just faced it by herself, although she looked terrible these days. “Mom, I am sorry,” I said to her. Sean stood beside me. He held my shoulder gently, and I cried. In the ceremony, I was sitting beside my mother. My classmates made a lot of paper cranes for me. They said they wished I could live better in the next world. However, they didn’t know I was still around them and could see everything they had done for me. They bowed to my
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photo like others did and then went back to their seats. Next were my good friends. They put the letter they wrote to me in front of my photo and told me how good they thought I was and how much they missed me. They bowed to my photo and went back to their seats. I knew the end od the ceremony was approaching. My mom stood up and went to my coffin. She hit my coffin three times. This is a Taiwanese traditional culture which meant I was an unfilial daughter who
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caused her sad and cry. At the end of the ceremony, they put all things they wanted to give me inside the coffin and burned the coffin. I’ve never felt I was so important to everyone. I thought I was nonessential to everyone, but I was wrong. They all loved me. Nonetheless, it was too late to know it. I wouldn’t have any chance to repay their goodness and kindness to me anymore, because I was now dead. “Sean, will they think of me from
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time to time?� I asked Sean who was playing with a cat, but no one answered me. After my funeral, Sean and I were still here. Not heaven and not hell. At that time, Sean and I were staying with mom. Sometimes, we would go somewhere we couldn’t go when we were alive, such as a playground or some sightseeing spots. However, this kind of life was really boring. Nothing changed in my life. Things just repeated themselves again and
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again. All I could do was to watch everyone’s daily life. After that, many days had passed by. It was now the next semester. A new student came to our class. It was a beautiful girl. Because of her arriving, our class was thirty-five people again. On the day she came to our class, Ms. Chen asked her to take the only empty seat in the classroom. It was my seat. How could they give my seat to someone else? It was mine. Although I was no longer alive, I
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still considered myself a member of the class. How could they do this to me? I didn’t understand. The new student had replaced me little by little. My friends loved her very much. They walked together, talked together, and even did group work together. They did everything together. I knew I was no longer needed anymore. It was sad. “Natasha, are you ok?” asked Sean. I smiled to him and said, “I’m OK. I’m just having a hard time with this.”
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“Natasha, be happier. I believe they will remember you.” That afternoon, I returned home with Sean. I needed to be with my mom immediately. In my home, I was glad everything was the same. I was still part of their family. I was mom’s daughter. They had a normal life, but the atmosphere was still sad in my home. At the moment, I found out that my family members were actually the ones who cared about and loved me the most. However, it was too
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late to realize that. I was dead. There was nothing I could do for them. “No, it is not too late,” said Sean. I looked at him surprisingly. I couldn’t speak. How could he know what I was thinking about? “I just know,” he said and sat down on a chair near me. I stared at him without saying anything. “Now, tell me if you want to be with them again?” he asked waiting for my
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answer. I recollected all the things that had happened these days and now, I knew what to do. I nodded to him and firmly said, “yes!” Sean’s hand waved in front of me and he told me to close my eyes. As I closed my eyes, I became unconscious.
Chapter 5
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After I woke up, I was in the hospital. Everyone was around me. They looked so excited. Oh! Shit! It hurt. I couldn’t even move a finger. “Mom! Mom! Natasha is awake!” I heard Alex shouting. I heard them all running into the room. My throat was too sore to say a word. I wanted to call my mom, but I couldn’t. Then someone hugged me. It was my mom. “Thank God. You are ok
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now,” she said. “I thought you would never awake.” I hugged my mom as tightly as I could. I swore I would never let go of her hand. Although I was not quite sure if she could understand what I said, I told her with my hoarse voice, “Mom, I love you.”
Acknowledgement page
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The death http://farm1.static.flickr.com/26/40801231 _4f7276f0a8.jpg
Picture on back-cover page http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3567/332770 8640_7ccbb2a063.jpg (Name of this picture: because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me)
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Have you ever talked to Death? Death is actually not as horrible as you think. It was on my birthday, the date I was born and died. I met him, the Death. He saved the innocent me and taught me lessons about life and love. My life changed.
~Lisa Jiang~
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