I Still Hear Your Mother's Screams

  It's a strange thing, isn't it? How we all know that our time in this world is limited, or rather just a long visit. Yet this is what we never learnt to do - accept death. We were never flexible with the idea of encountering the touch of death. It's like walking up a long staircase hoping for other steps to take yet there are not, leading you to fall in the ever-expanding confusion and void inside you while you're torn between the nostalgia of the familiar and the consumption of the foreign mystery of death.

   I never came to this realisation until yesterday when I was sitting with my older sister in a moment of peace contemplating love and abruptly heard his mother's screams. Until I saw Ali's body floating on the pool in front of my house, dead. Until I saw his sister running towards him crying her eyes out while others prevented her from reaching his dead body: for her young self, will never bear seeing her brother's corpse lying lifelessly on the ground that once held him so high. I never realised how close death is until his soul was taken from his family while we had nothing to do but accept that the universe had other solo plans for him.

   Your death made me realise that we're all here striving for survival. Every one of us is fighting for sympathy, for acceptance but in distinct ways. Even during the toughest of times when our logic creates every reason for not living our brain fights aiming for survival. Ali's brain was fighting for his survival when it was labouring to keep him alive when he drowned but failed. His mother was fighting for her survival by allowing her hurtful screams to escape past her quivering lips, hoping that it will ease her pain while his sister was fighting for survival by wearing her heart on her sleeves; seeking hopelessly for a way to paralyse the pain consuming every inch of her young body.

   I never really knew you but I heard of you. I saw you. I saw you playing every day in the pool that you were taken away from us in. I saw you running towards your mother and giving her a goodbye kiss before you went to play in the pool every day. I saw you helping the young boy who fell off his bike and offering him your last candy bar. I saw you at 3 AM celebrating your sister after she reached her American dream.

   It has been sixteen days since your death yet I still hear your mother's screams, the sound of it echos inside my head looking for answers, for reassurance that death is not a touch away from my loved ones. It has been sixteen days since your departure and it left me with extensive pain. It has been sixteen days since your death and I no longer hear laughter and happy childish screams in the pool. It has been sixteen days and ever since you left, the pool has been abandoned. It has been a day since you left and I miss catching quick glimpses of you playing joyfully from my balcony. I always thought that the lingering pain of the death of a loved one is just a detour in our lives.
But it's not.

   And so to each one of you: we come from the same soil and we will go back to it. We never really apprehend the importance of their touch until they're gone so tell them. Tell them how much you love them. Tell them how you think that their laughter could light up cities and mend broken hearts. Tell them how much you miss them. Tell them how the thought of them brings you delight. Tell them because what keeps Ali's mother away from him is not just feet or miles, what keeps them away from each other is an unwanted life full of years waiting to be lived by his mother without him, without her only son.

    To Ali's mother, I never saw you after his tragic death. I left a day after his death for I couldn't bear staying in a place where he was taken away from you. If you're alive, you're going enough and if you're surviving then I'm proud of you. I know it's hard. I know that it hurts. I know that you'd rather choose to be dead than to not live another day without him. I know that it feels like all the hope and faith has been stolen from you but you have to keep going. You have to keep going for him. His body is at peace yet his soul still lives on. Save your tears for when all is lost and gone you'll meet him again and believe me for once again it will finally feel like home. Until then when you miss him, you'll find him watching over you, telling you to stay strong, to hold on a little tighter for I swear the pain will ease.
One day it will.