On the nature of cursed fault lines

My mother’s baby sister was curled up on the sofa, her eyes brimming with every sliver of hope we were left with. I do not remember talking much about anything at all, not that I had much to say. She left me a soft, kind gaze before she asking how life was back in college. Even as I could sense death lurking in our vicinity, I told her that things were good and that everything will be alright, fearing it would be the last I’d see of her. On the taxi back home, the sky was vapid and colourless like a grim presage of how things were to change forever.

April bereaved me of my aunt. My guardian mom I could never have the strength to say goodbye to. I cannot walk around in her flat anymore without catching a faint presence of her in every corner. The acrylic flowerpots or the tablecloth we dined on, everything spills a myriad of memories we cannot digest. My poor grandma, fraught with impassable grief, has never had the same look in her eyes since. And the rest of us cloak our anguish with responsibilities as we grapple with the reality of our lives.

The arrow of time is apathetic and ceaseless. But I didn’t need to be reminded of this in the cruelest of ways. A part of my childhood dread has now materialized, leaving the land beneath our feet cracked apart. Her tragic passing will forever be a torn patch in the fabric of our family but I know we will come to peace with it, eventually. For I also know that she has found the same peace in heart of the eternal universe.