Daddy died yesterday.

"What's that on your eye?"

The first thing she said to me in 7 months.

I looked at her parted peach coloured lips that revealed her excellent set of baby teeth. I couldn’t help but wonder—did she avoid sweets? See a dentist every month?

She was smiling, something she refused to do in weeks. Her mother did a great job, reinventing her daughter's beautiful smile. She looked straight into my irises, reading my life history and I reading hers.

She smiled again and asked me the same question. I smiled too and pondered what those irises thought about when she was alone. What swirled in her mind when she was alone? Did the dark thoughts she once confided to my aunt still haunt her? Did she remember what she was trying so desperately to forget?

Her eyes told me she did.

She smiled again and patted my lap gently. Then, a loose thread on my shoulder caught her attention. Without hesitation, she tugged at it like it was something dangerous.

"What's this?" She asked, holding the thread out to my face. A thread, it was, I explained and advised her not to pull any other thread unless she'd ruin the cloth. She was unsatisfied but still took the advice and turned away to focus on what question to ask me next. The priest’s voice filled the church, commanding the congregation’s focus. Everyone but us seemed to listen intently. Our pew was on the right of the altar and the priest could probably see us distracted. I wanted to hear what he was saying but my companion wanted me to do something different.

I also wanted to hear what she has to say. She's too young to know the details of her father's death. Why did they tell her? She's so sure he died yesterday. He died yesterday, she remembers. He's been dying yesterday for the past seven months. When she says it, she places her hands in a praying pose, like she's praying he'd come back from where he died to.

The child I knew 7 months ago was not an introvert. You could have said she has ADHD. She wasn't ever comfortable in one place. The whole church knew her. The energetic chubby little girl with long black hair and a smile always plastered on her face, who sat anywhere she liked and infected people with her giggling and mischief. A natural performer, she could have been a singer, a YouTuber, maybe even an actress.

Now, she seemed like a shadow of that vibrant child.

Her younger brother's head was tightly pressed on his mother's belly and he looked calmer than before. His mother kept telling him sorry and he felt better because he wasn't shouting like before. When she freed him, he remained calm for a while. But the calm didn’t last. Moments later, he was wailing again, clutching his head with both hands. His voice shattered the quiet reverence of the church. He wasn't like that before. He never talked in church, talk less of shouting. I glanced at him, and so did the rest of the church. He went from seat to seat, screaming in pain.

I wondered if he was ill or if it was trauma. He’d never been like this before. He was the quiet one, a Daddy’s boy who rarely spoke to anyone but his father. Now, he stumbled toward me, his face wet with tears, tapping my legs with a desperate urgency. Was he having a headache, I thought. I touched his head and massaged it gently while asking him what went wrong. He mumbled something that sounded like "my head, my head" then began shouting again. Is that his way of coping?

I knew that this certainly can't be a headache. He was clearly missing his papa. His looked lost. He was lost, and I wondered where his thoughts went when he was like this. He couldn’t form a full sentence, so what did his mind cling to?

The priest ended his homily and everyone stood up to chant the creed. He was still shouting and his sister looked in his direction with a sad face. Their mother ushered him through the side door, her hands firm but gentle as she guided him to the back of the church.

Their mother is the strongest woman I know. She kept a smile on her face and greeted her fellow parishioners one after the other. She was trying to be strong for her children and you could see the stress tattooed all over her. She deserves better. Who knew her husband would travel and never return in one piece, leaving her with three kids—-two children and one baby? Is this the better life she wanted?

(A true story)

Image by [email protected] from Pixabay