first loves.
It’s much harder than I thought it would ever be. I reek of pain.
Happy Eid Mubarak ❤️
I remember when I got the news of his death. I remember it so vividly. I doubt I remember any backstory of my scars and even the one on my left cheek. But I remember it so clearly and it has been five years now. Not that I hope five years is enough time to let the thoughts of it all disappear into thin air but how the pain and hurt still hits as hard as five years back baffles me.
This man was the first love of my life. I wish I could say I remember his smile from the instant I was birthed. But I know he smiled far more than his mouth could give him the grace to. He loved me more than I felt he was obligated to and the tears that rolled down my eyes have never been enough. I want to hold him once more. Just once more and tell him how every morning, no matter how beautiful the sun is Or how beautifully the music box he got when I was six sings, none of them can heal my heart and place the fragments back.
The following Sunday after his death, we were meant to be at church for prayer. It was a routine to pray for a successful burial. I happened to have read many times that funerals were like closures for we that were left behind. I wish it was so for me.
I opened the bulletin as I sat down in the row left for my family to sit. There was a section left for us to sit. I saw a time set aside for us in the order of the day. During the service, I looked back and hoped to see him sit at his usual spot but he wasn’t there.
My heart hurt more at that moment then I stared at the Reverend and hoped he would know no amount of prayer could take the pain away. It was way deeper than he and the congregation laying their hands upon us.
When the service was over, I went to his usual spot and let out my hands; maybe somehow, he would do the same and hold me. It hurt to lose a father and a best friend at the same time.
The pain was excruciating.
My head felt like it could fall. I held out my hands for more than five minutes and by the second and by the minute, as my mind realized that he wasn’t there and he was never going to be, I began to lose balance and I fell. Gradually, I was losing clear sight of my surrounding but I could see my mother running from the crowd that gathered to sympathize with her and held my head. It was blurry but I figured she was the one in the clear white Abaya she put on.
A few seconds later, I blacked out.
And the rest of what happened, I have no idea but I remember waking up in the church clinic to my mother’s weary face. I couldn’t begin to imagine how much more grief if she had lost me on the same day she prayed in the house of God to relieve her of the pain of losing her first love. She once told me about how he was and is her first love.
The pain, the grief, the hurt have seemed to clothe me and the nightmares have become far more than normal. I believe that must be why my mother has kept me in a home to see a therapist every Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday.
I doubt if there is healing left in any chapter of my life but I try for my mother.
And, I miss him.
