Crash! Screech! It all happened so fast. I remember the feeling that flooded me.
I felt as though I was standing, alone, staring into a mirror. I watched someone else lose her mother, but it wasn’t my mother who passed that night. No, it wasn’t my mother whose body lay in the street, rain falling around her like glass bullets.
I stood staring into the mirror, expressionless, and watched. I simply watched and was thankful that it wasn’t my mother. No, it wasn’t mine. It wasn’t my body that crumpled into a heap at the sight of my dead mother. No, it wasn’t me who lay helpless, watching my mom’s body turn to ice.
I watched as the ambulance came. I stood and watched in the mirror. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t my mother, yet certain sadness overcame me regardless.
It wasn’t me who fought the medics for my mother’s body. No, because it wasn’t my mother who died that night.
It wasn’t me who was crying, tears joining the rain in a fatal plunge to the asphalt below. I didn’t scream as an IV was shoved into my mother’s arm.
No, it couldn’t be, for I was standing and staring into a mirror watching all of this unfold.
I was watching as the ambulance drove away as swiftly as it had come.

I tried to tear my gaze away from the mirror but couldn’t. I could not escape and I realized that I wasn’t staring into a mirror. I was standing in the middle of a street as an ambulance drove away. A thought tugged on the corner of my mind and I turned, surprised that I didn’t see my mother. That’s when reality sunk in.
There was no mirror.