Dear Sister,
Tragedy strikes us without precedent. Our mother sounds hideous when she cries, worse when she struggles to carry conversation as she does it. It is a deranged wailing interrupted only by loud sniffling, some sort of twisted combination of shrieking and sighing and heavy breathing, her voice loud and thick as it carries through the phone to her sister in India.
Someone our mother has loved so dearly has come to pass, and though I’ve never known him, the utter finality of a life ending affects me so incredibly deeply. It is as though I can feel my soul clenching, my heart already breaking. I am mourning for his death, but more so, I am mourning for those he has left behind. I’m crying for our mother’s loss, worried for her well being, terrified of how it will affect her deep-rooted darkness. My mind cannot fathom the chaos with our family back home, and I feel nothing short of inexpressibly awful for our beautiful cousin, soon to-be-married. She was gorgeous and glowing in her excitement, but now her wedding day will be clouded by the terrible loss of her oldest uncle.
And so I cannot possibly even begin to compare, or even imagine, the extent of emotional torture our mother is enduring. Years of memories, joyous and painful alike are resurfacing, tugging at her mind, and yanking away her defenses in several directions until she’s nothing more than a red, blubbering mess on our living room couch. For her now, the past morphs into something grotesque, and I’m wishing so desperately to hide its vicious form from her eyes.
But I am as powerless in helping her as we are in thwarting death. A queasiness is spreading through my system, nausea overtaking my senses. It is accentuated by the silence spreading through the house after the chaos it just beheld, and my mind is shutting down against the prospect of productivity.
Tragedy strikes us without precedent; I am beginning to fear contentment.
Sincerely Yours,
The Vertiginous Wallflower
sisters of diaspora 