IN SPITE OF WRATH

 

Between the shadows and space, a young girl has possessed a strange heart, with dreams that make her pale, her head filled with the rage of grief, her grief. For two years she has nursed the same far thirst, the same fever and anguish with a word that hasn’t left her lips since then. She has written letters over and over, with a shadow in her soul that she could give up so as to have him back. Her nights have been long unmixed with oblivion, becoming a part of the atmosphere as a leash becomes part of a dog’s neck. She has called to things that have vanished, to beings that have vanished. Death is drawn to sound, its footsteps and its clothes echo, hushed like a tree. She hardly sees, but it seems to her that its song has the color of wet violets. Its gaze is etched with the moisture of a violet leaves and its color of exasperated winter. It goes about in the earth, riding a broom and lays waiting by the harbor, dressed as an admiral.

Time has lapsed, the wounds, the void. And the scars it left feels like yesterday, and yesterday feels so close to get healed already. Some days are nicer to me, but some are so cruel when the mist clouds my eyes, eyes closed and head down in disdain, wondering whether my heart will warm up again. The path has been cold and I have wallowed alone in so long, home, not again in sight. I wondered how they moved on so easily from one loss to another, yet I am not made a step from the wagon of ache I came into existence with. Untraceable waves of emotions, days when nothing feels right dragging me to the gravest corners. These wounds, untouched, I’ve kept them close, they are the only memory I have left never feeling a full moon light since the last day I saw your last smile with your eyes shining. 

 I have been watching the moon at times hoping that wherever you are you can see the moon too. I have held on to that feeling long enough but now the moonlight is so chilled. It illuminates my sorrows that I have wallowed through for two years, not making it easier for me to smile. I can feel the sky pitying me even when its blue but my days are just gray. I’m hoping that tonight the moon will not illuminate my flows. When it happened, I had no place to run too, I would sit alone for hours and hours not able to fathom why. The wind would whisper calm words, they would sooth me. Only nature could understand the anger that was inside, time passed and the wind broke the pact, to always calm me down. That one night, sited on his favorite spot, looking at the stars trying to recall the last memory of  him, I felt a cold rush on my skin. The wind, it was so cold, harsh on my skin filled with a strange silence. The only sound was the sobs and my feeble footsteps as I tried to find my way home. Home, word so strange now. Walking into nothingness trying to follow my sanity which must have abandoned my being on the day I learnt that I’d never hold his hand again. Sad knots in my throat, feeling a bit too tight, gasping for breath hoping that my heart lasted a little longer. My younger brother needed me, to shield him from the misery and the pain. 

I made my way home, but everything brought back his memory, the way he’d point out to the stars for us, the way he made life so much easier. I lurked outside the house for a while, in the darkness. Maybe I had come to like the shadows that come with the light, because of that lurking feeling in the black made me escape the unvoiced regrets, that lasted longer wrapping time around sadness. 

Suicide, a word that society fights to keep it off their lips, like a taboo that if spoken about befalls the utterer. Not thinking of the pain of those left behind, stuck in pain and disbelief that the signs so plain in sight, that could have stopped this from happening. I wonder each day whether we could have stopped it. this sound in my ears every day that we could have stopped it torns me apart almost every day. On better days I try to smile but the guilt of him having suffered without me getting a glimpse of his sorrow, not being able to seep into his sadness yet claiming I loved him. the worst thing about suicide, never gives us the chance to say goodbye, just rips out our hearts, leaving us to sew it back again with the pieces of memories remaining in our minds. It’s not like an illness that makes you ready for the worst, you know they might get better but can as well leave. 

His death to suicide represented an almost irreconcilable breach of trust in the love that we had shared. It broke me that he didn’t as well think about how much we were gonna miss him, that he wouldn’t be there to watch my brothers all grown something that he always looked forward to. It’s just sad how in a blink, things turn to dust and some of our pieces leave, intertwined with the dust. Pieces we never get back. Gone with the Wind.

I was 19 by then, I’ve tried to live life wholeheartedly, at times feeling his presence inside of me. His pictures still hanging solemnly low, still grieving him yet he’d never be back. I missed him, terribly as much as I could say. I was angry at myself. I had this thought that I was so tough and level headed that I was capable of dealing with any weight thrown at me. but now I was disturbed by my inability to accept his death. Everything reminded me of him. The farm, the house, the sky, my brothers; they had taken is appearance. Everywhere I went lay his image. I had tried to cope with the trauma. Day by day, week by week I tried to put him behind my sorrow, with tears, guilt and bitterness. I had tried to find things to dull my pain. I was slowly beginning to slip back to the handful condition in which I had wallowed in after it happened. 

I had believed that time should have put more distance between me and my anguish. So after all time was not a healer of wounds. They say trust time and I wonder how many summers and autumn shall I put in between the chapters of yesterday and todays so as to never feel this ache again. Instead, the passing weeks had been bringing me around a full circle of my grief. Though I always resisted the grim truth, it gradually exerted itself every time pushing me against the wall, bringing me down so hard. Is such a love bound to end in vain?  how do you fill the void that stems from unhappiness, engulfing you, as the one hand you long to hold, has left you numb and in the cold? I will smile again, and it will be his smile intertwined with mine. I will hold the memories closer. I will always let you know every detail in my life. I will always be your little girl.

I miss you dad, every day.

A friend lost her dad to suicide, loss has been black and unchained. Even though there might be no existence of words to sooth despair, let alone answer it, I have tried my best to pen her feelings into words. She longs for a day that she will wear a smile without dwelling on stones that darken the earth. I know nothing about broken nests, but I know of pain that we all hold on to. I know of broken pacts, that cut deeper like a broken piece of glass. between hearts lies a relatedness, therefore the love is endless, he is endless. Even though silent, he smells the dampness of your heart at deep midnight.  Some moments you will find peace, solitary peace of pasture and rock, of damp river margins, the wind will be alive, to offer you pure gifts, it will beat the cloud of restlessness. You will learn to come up from the deeps. It’s never time to break of the sombre roses, to shut the stars and bury the ash in the earth, but in the rising of the light, you will rise with the woke, or go on dreaming, reaching the other shore of the sea that has no other show and that way he will whisper words into your dream.

With love

Rest in peace, my childhood playmate misses you