shutting the door

     Today, the door shuts on my past. For Mari, Logan and Ty, that door shuts, too.
    For decades, our lives have felt somewhat like that of Linus from the Peanuts cartoon, with a dark cloud looming overhead, shrouding us in darkness, following wherever we go. Our clouds, filled with very few good thoughts, bulge with deep-rooted remembrances that shower us with pain. Only the four of us felt the burden of the cloud and running away became our only refuge.
     I suspect that to some, we created the dilemma and were the ones responsible for a demise of a family. Unless you heard the screams and saw the tears, I guess believing the finger-pointing was easier. Why is it we always believe easy and convenient and loud?
     Today, literally, the screams will be silenced, the showers, turned off, the hurt, buried. However, within our hearts and minds, well, that is another story. Some days, it's easy to forget because right now is so good. And others, voices bounce back-and-forth in my brain and won't shut off. It's hard to leave the past behind when it invades the present. But for the sake of tomorrow, we have to let go and push it off, cling to our strengths and know, the past and it's circumstances must never define us.
     Today, we let go. Mari, Logan, Ty - we must let go. Never again do we run or hide. It can't hurt us anymore.