Sorry.

It’s just a word, isn’t it? It’s just like most words in the English language, it has consonants and a vowel or two. It’s in the dictionary. It’ll score you points in a game of Scrabble.

But it’s just a word. A rather pointless one at that. Sorry. What does it really mean? some murderers say they’re sorry - does it erase what they did? How can one word take back all the hurt, all the agony a human being can cause?

I don’t do apologies. As I talk you through where I’ve been and what I’ve done, maybe you’ll understand why. If I did apologies, I’d have too many to offer.

To Mary: I’m sorry I didn’t wake up sooner.

To my parents: I’m sorry I wasn’t the perfect, God-fearing son you wanted. To Joseph: I’m sorry I didn’t have the strength to support you

To Michael: I’m sorry I’ll never be what you deserve.

Sorry.

It’s just a word, isn’t it?

It was cold Christmas Eve in Nebraska. Anna Eden knelt in the deserted chapel, praying to God, begging him to fulfil her fondest wish. She had been His loving and devoted child her whole life, surely she deserved a Christmas gift of her own?

January 1st, the following year. Anna Eden was resting against the pristine white pillows of her hospital bed. Her husband, his eyes full of pride, placed the tiny bundle of blankets in her outstretched arms. Their baby boy, their kinda blue eyed first born.

They named me Adam Peter Eden.

A few days later, they took me back to their shoebox house on its quiet, predominantly Catholic street with its manicured lawn and reliable car in the paved driveway. Shortly after that, in a ceremony including everyone my parents knew, I was baptised.

Obviously, I don’t remember my early years. By the time I was a cherubic boy of five, I had two brothers, Connor and Robert and a sister Mary. Connor and Robert were identical twins, and just a year younger than me. Mary was two years younger than me, a quiet and alien life form to me because she was a girl.

My father Brian was a mechanic and he was English, a fact his dusty record collection boasted. His record collection, which had been locked away when he married my mother, included everyone from David Bowie, Brian Ferry and Roxie Music to The Clash and The Sex Pistols. He came to America when he was young to be a rock star, and failed. In failure, he found religion.

My mother was a sheltered girl who married my father because her parents told her not to. Together, they built a life based on fear; they followed Catholicism because it was safe and they were afraid of making their own way in an ever-darkening world. It always intrigued me that a punk rocker (kind of) and his rebellious wife could impose the laws of God so severely on their children.

My early childhood was nothing short of picturesque. Nothing bad happened in our neighbourhood. Death and Evil were no more than characters in the Bible. I was well looked after. My parents loved me. My brothers looked up to me. Mary delighted in my attention. I went to Mass, I believed in God and loved Him like a second father. I knew love and affection, and cherished them.

People told me I looked like an angel, with my neat brown hair, violet-blue eyes and delicate, almost feminine hands. That’s what I wanted, to be an angel so that when I died, I could go to Heaven.

Everyone was so proud of me. Life was perfect, like all childhoods should be. I had my family, my friends and my faith. I even joined the chapel choir, because my mother thought I had a beautiful singing voice.

I thought we would go on that way, with me loving everything, even school. I was seven years old when everything changed. I woke up early that morning and crept surreptitiously downstairs, not wanting to wake anyone. Mary was lying on the kitchen floor, still in her nightgown. It was white, with delicate yellow centred pink flowers stitched perfectly around the collar and cuffs.

I remember everything about that moment. The cold morning sunshine had already filled the kitchen, bathing the floor in golden light and catching the natural highlights in Mary’s almost white-blond hair. She looked so little.

“Mary, get up!” I said, kneeling down beside her tiny body to shake her gently. Her nightgown had slipped off her shoulder, and when I touched her, I realised her skin was like the icy lake that we went skating on every winter.

“Mary, you’re gonna catch a cold!” I warned, turning her over to breathe in her ear because that always woke her up.

Her eyes were already open, too big and too bright. Her mouth, with its perfect pink lips, was open slightly. Mary had always looked so warm and full of life, but not that morning. She scared me, and I felt so stupid because my baby sister had managed to trick me.

“Quit foolin’ around Mary, or I’ll get Mom and Dad!” I told her in my most threatening (I didn’t scare a fly) voice. She didn’t move, she just lay there with her eyes glassy like a doll’s.

“Mom!” I yelled at the top of my voice. “Dad!”

They came stumbling in, their eyes clouded with sleep. They looked so normal with their tousled hair and crumpled pyjamas.

“What’s up pumpkin?”

“Mary’s pretending and she won’t stop,” I whined, pointing to my sister as she lay on the kitchen floor.

They both glanced over at Mary. Before I knew it, my father was on the floor beside her, breathing into Mary’s mouth as my mother sobbed down the phone.

I didn’t know what was happening, but somehow I knew that Mary wasn’t pretending anymore. My parents, who had always been loving and gentle had faces like stone. The screaming sirens woke Connor and Robert, who came tumbling downstairs with their usual boundless energy.

We were sent to a neighbour’s house while Mom and Dad went to the hospital with Mary. It was dark by the time they returned, their faces puffy, red and human again. The twins had been asleep for hours. I sat awake in the living room, perfectly composed.

Death is a necessary evil, something we all must face sooner or later. Even in adulthood, it can be a baffling and agonising idea. At seven, it is beyond all comprehension.

“Your sister is with God now,” My mother said slowly. I felt a pang of jealousy - why did Mary get to be in Heaven? At that point, I didn’t really know the horrors of death. All I knew was that Mary had been chosen to be with God.

Of course, my parents didn’t elaborate that the price of Mary’s ascension had been her life; her future, her possibility, her spirit - all of them lost. They never once referred to her as being dead, she was merely watching and waiting for us.

“Oh,” I replied. “Well, when is she coming back?”

“She’s not coming back sweetie, she’s going to stay with God forever,” My mother explained, her words heavy with sorrow.

“But she can’t be gone, I saw her in the kitchen this morning…she was there, so how can she be with God?”

They looked at each other, lost for words. Through my innocence, through my faith, a startling revelation bubbled into my consciousness - they didn’t know. They didn’t understand why God had taken their daughter away, when she’d been as free of sin as any child.

I don’t remember much about the funeral. I suppose it was very average - people in black, sympathetic murmuring of an undiagnosed heart defect and brave faces. When Mary’s tiny coffin was bought into the chapel, I turned to my mother.

“What’s in the box?” I whispered, wondering why the men - which included my father - were carrying it so carefully.

“Your sister is in the coffin Adam,” She mumbled, her eyes dull with grief.

“But I thought Mary was with God?” My voice held a hint of stubbornness and an undoubting curiosity that my parents grew to hate in my troubled adolescence.

“She is.”

“So why is she in the box?” I demanded, thoroughly confused.

“Now is not the time.”

I glared at her, but she offered no more ambiguous answers. That, was to be the worst things my parents could have done. Children ask questions about the world because they don’t understand it. Hell, adults do it too. It is the responsibility of parents to offer their own answers as well as ask questions.

My parents didn’t like questions, so in time the only person I had to put questions to was myself. I didn’t have the answers then, and I don’t claim to have them now. The answers don’t matter anymore anyway, it’s the fact that I had those questions, that I allowed myself to think about them that counts. Marius, the God-like vampire in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles told his little lover and fledgling Amadeo to be his “bold and ungrateful pupil”. I didn’t mean to be bold and ungrateful. The love of God allowed me to live safely in those early years.

But that love, that devotion, wasn’t enough. Mary was no sinner, no more than me, so why had God taken her? Why did He hurt my parents when they tried so hard to please Him? God knew what it was to lose a child, why would He let someone else suffer that terrible agony and crushing guilt?

Questions and questions and questions. No answer I could offer seemed sufficient. There was no sign from God to stop my faith wavering.

Oh yes, I had a faith crisis. The death of Mary, which had bought forward many questions, was a catalyst for my own trials. At seven, I decided I did not love God anymore. I continued to go to Mass, to say my prayers, but it was out of fear. I couldn’t tell anyone.

I was all alone.