I hear an earsplitting scream travel through the house. A chair is thrown at the wall and it breaks and splinters into tiny pieces. I crept quietly from my room and watched as my mom picked up the lamp and threw it to the floor, the light bulb shattering on the floor. At first I let her; I let her take her anger out on the furniture, because if I don’t, she’ll take it out on me. She lets out another scream; it tears my heart and builds into my ear drums. She pounds on the wall, our family pictures crashing to the ground. The neighbor’s downstairs bang on their ceiling with a broom, but my mom screams down unintelligible words at them. They start cursing in Italian. “Mom” I say quietly, and see that she has collapsed on the floor, shaking. Her red, curly, hair covers her face, but I can see that she is sobbing, her shoulders are shaking. I kneel down next to her and put my arm around her as she cries and cries. “Mom, what is it?” I ask, but she looks up in a silence so deep and astounding it would ripple the world down to its core. Her eyes are dilated, and staring up at me. The same green eyes I have. She stretches her hands out to me and puts it on my shoulder, “I can’t take it Casey, I just can’t…” she sobs and sobs, her red nails clawing at her face. My dad died a year ago, and ever since then, my mom’s been a torpedo of craziness. He was everything to her, everything. He was a photographer, the greatest, and he loved my mom more than the world itself. He loved me, too. He had curly dark locks of hair and blue eyes, tall and lean. He had an amazing smile and a charming laugh. But on his trip to Japan, he had a heart attack and died, right there, on the plane. We found out a week later, and our life tilted and crashed right at our feet. My mom had to pick up two jobs, and she never sleeps. I’m handling it much better then she is, and right now, I’m more of a mom to her than she is to me. Before college, my mom needed anger management classes. She was always in a fight, throwing things, or screaming. That’s where she met m dad, who focused on nothing but death. He gave her patience; she gave him hope in life. They were two peas in a pod, there for each other. I wish that I could be that life-changing person for my mom that she didn’t have to depend on him so much that it killed her. Every night there’s another scene, and slowly I can feel her anger rising, her temper bursting through the roof, and I’m scared one day she’ll kill someone. Or worst, kill herself.