Dated: Monday, March 4, 2019

The sky was crimson grey; one could easily whirl it and spread it on the shoulders like a shawl. The howling wind slashed the cracked winter dry skin of my face like blades. And I kept on walking, leaving the traces of my footprints in the moldy mud in front of the hospital pavement.

I made my way up to the entrance and sprinted upstairs, my vision blurred to see the elevator as a faster way to my destination. The waiting area hugged an eerie silence in its middle, releasing it only when my hurried footsteps made their way past it.

Pausing slightly to glance sideways, I stood for a flicker of second at the door to the private ward, and then turned the knob, my knuckles white against the cold hard metal. Two nurses stood near the edge of the bed over which the frail, withered body lay.

“He’s going ….hurry!” one of them whispered guiding me towards the side of his form, a tangle of bones, wires and tubes with a hint of flesh, the figurine not much more than an automaton, kept alive by the beeping ventilator.

I held his hand, his white cold hand and whispered softly near his ears, “Grandpa!” he stirred, the lifeless form opening his eyes to reveal the shadows of death looming over it. Wanting to say something, he struggled raising his hand to the oxygen mask which aided him.

I love you” all he could manage, all the battle for three words. “I love you too, Grandpa, will always do”. I whispered back, his rising breaths even for a second before his heaving chest paused, and then the C.R.O showed a straight line.
He was gone! The ward boys and nurses now struggling to free the corpse from the web of tubes it was entangled in. Then they spread a white sheet over him, covering it, vanishing it from my sight.

I was left alone, so lonely as the floor wobbled beneath me, taking me with it ,I knew it was coming, I had prepared my mind for it. But heart! Dear readers ….it can never be convinced. The grief gnawing at my soul and fear of obviation scratching at my doorstep.

And here I sit, remembering the flashbacks of me returning to life, finding a job, having a family, moving on. but I still remember the days of my adolescence with him being my only guardian, our love being an infinity and some infinities are larger than others. People say we move on but here I sit, stuck in a quagmire of the reminiscence ,the good one ,the bad one ,down the memory lane. Love never vanishes! It takes forms and once you tap it, it unleashes with full spirit, knocking down your breaths and resurrecting the memories you buried eons ago.

Mahnoor AqeelO-II