Death Couldn’t Have Been So Certain
No doubt death is powerful, but it is more powerful sometimes.
We lived together for one year and five days. It was the best time of my life. I have never known the love she gave me. We were together most of the time. We laugh together, walked together, slept together, woke together, and ate together.
Our lives were so much attached. She was the source of happiness in my life.
Then she left me one day suddenly. She left everything behind. I was looking at her with my two helpless eyes and couldn’t do anything. Yet, she was leaving me behind. She was looking neither to her mom or anyone else but to me, the last moment she breathed her last.
Her death robbed me of everything. She was the love of my life. Her laugh was the sweetest music I would love to hear every time. She had the best laugh I have ever seen.
She came into my life when there was nothing good in it. She brought hope, luck, and everything I was missing in my life. She arrived at a time when miseries, sufferings, and darkness had engulfed my life from all sides. I was broken. I was jobless. I was penniless.
The joblessness pushed me to the dark recesses of depression and anxieties. I didn’t know when my relations deteriorated with my spouse. My conditions had an extremely negative effect on our relationship. We didn’t fight or clashed. But we didn’t talk to each other. We had hidden grudges or maybe hidden love that wanted a brief-expression to settle everything. But we didn’t talk at all.
My conditions had affected my spouse too. I would take her to a psychiatrist. And with regular medication, she was doing well, and it relieved me.
Then she came into our lives, and my spouse forgot about her psychiatrist and medication. I was so happy. She fulfilled our lives, especially mine. I don’t know how, but the day she came into my life, my life changed.
I got a good-paying job as a teacher that helped me meet my needs. She gave us happiness.
Ramysa was born in December 2016 on a chilly winter night. It was raining all night. Sometimes, the rain would pick a speed, and other times slow down without stopping.
She was the beautiful creature I had ever seen. My spouse and I were too happy at her arrival. We loved her more than anything.
After a few months, when she could sit and started cruising, she would hurry to reach my lap when I would come home after school. She would try to outdo my son, 5 years older than her. The bond between us was too strong. Every daughter loves her father more. A father does the same.
I remember her every smile, and every moment we shared. Whenever she would wake up, she would smile when she would find me around her.
But all her smiles are a part of my memories I can never forget.
When she reached almost a year, she became ill. Apparently, she was healthy, but after two weeks, her health deteriorated to the point of her death.
I realized one day that she isn’t feeling well. I came home from school, but she didn’t rush toward me. Instead, she looked at me silently with downcast eyes. Still, she managed to give me a fleeting smile. I asked her mom what happened to my daughter? She said nothing happened to her. Kids are like this. She might be silent and out of energy, anyway. She is fine.
I realized my asking also made my spouse anxious, but she hid it. We took her to the best children’s doctor. He examined her thoroughly, weighed her, and even played with her a little. The doctor told me my daughter had a slight infection in her chest, and she will be fine soon. He prescribed a few medicines, which we gave her for two days. But there was no sign of recovery. I called the doctor to inquire about what to do. He said to bring her over to the hospital. I took her again, and the doctor admitted her to the hospital.
After a few days, I realized that she was recovering, and my happiness returned. After a week, she was discharged from the hospital, and I took her home.
It was late evening when I reached home. We were all happy and gossiped. We sit down to dine together, and my mom took her in her lap. She was lying in my mom’s lap and was looking at me.
A VIOLENT FIT TOOK HER, and a faint scream drew from her mouth. I was looking at her. She folded her hands, made fists, and rolled with pain in the lap of my mother.
My mother was weeping already. My wife was crying. And I was looking at my daughter in pain when her eyes turned white in front of me. It was a matter of a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do.
I just looked, and in front of my eyes, she breathed her last.
Her last moments and the turning of her eyes white and her delicate fist, trying to free herself from something, made a deep imprint on my heart, mind, and my life.
I was looking at the world of my happiness being taken away from me. The world as a whole was vanishing in front of my eyes.
Everyone was weeping. I consoled everyone. I held myself back and tried not to cry. My wife was weeping. I tried hard to appear strong. Someone had to be strong, and that was me. I wept inside. I was utterly broken. I couldn’t do anything to save my daughter.
That night, my paternal aunts and neighbor came. They prepared my daughter. My cousins and uncles came to my home. I took her to the grave with my hands. Put her in the grave despite my uncle’s insisted I shouldn’t do it.
I did it.
I kissed her one last time before putting her to the grave. I left her there in the darkness, all alone, beneath the layers of the earth.
That night and many other nights after that, I couldn’t lie down my head on my pillow. I just reclined in my bed. Everything was colorless. Nothing had charm. Nothing was happy, and everything was sad.
I saved her all the photos and the last charge sheet for years. I would see her photos secretly because my wife would often weep at them. So, I told her I had deleted it.
My mom requested me many times to delete her pictures and to give away her belongings. Finally, I gave up after years and gave away everything that belonged to her.
But she still lives on in my memories. Whenever I come home, I see her running toward me, trying to reach my lap before my other children.
Death silenced the music she brought into my life. Death is mighty indeed. But the end is unable to take her memories away from my heart.
Death is powerful. I know that. I knew that night that death is sometimes more powerful than it has to be. We are so helpless against it. We can’t do anything to save our dear ones from death.
But death gave me another lesson that night. It has changed my perception of life. It was the first time I realized death was real and so close to us. It gave me a morbid hope that nothing will stay. Everyone has to leave this place. There is nothing we could do to avoid it.
And that’s too for good.
The pain and the happiness are transitory. And the best thing is to enjoy and be happy with this transition. Death gave me the meaning of life. It taught me how to live and to accept whatever comes with a smiling face. Most of all, I found life in death by not fearing it anymore.
“Do not seek death. But do not fear it either. There cannot be life without death, it is inescapable.” — Keisei Tagami
