Rest In Peace: The Price of Mercy
What We Carry Beyond the Grave
“Why did you wish death upon me?” Her voice echoed through the pitch-black darkness, wavering and disembodied. I had no idea where I was — everything was shadows and an eerie sensations crawling over my skin like a snake slithering on a sand... I strained to see, to grasp anything about this place, but nothing made sense… except that the voice I heard belonged to someone who was long dead. Someone, I loved the most. Someone, I lived throughout…
How could she speak to me now? Am I dead? Is this a dream? or Am I pulled out of this universe to the other realm? A cold shiver ran through me, an uncontrollable shudder that left me gasping for air. Just the thought of not being alive was enough to send me spiraling into panic. I could hear my own breath, ragged and desperate.
This must be an enclosed room, walls creeping closer to suffocate me… I needed to breathe fresh air… but there was none.
“You didn’t have to pray for it… I was dying anyway.” Her voice now brimmed with disappointment rather than accusation. I felt like I was choking.
Yes, she was dying… slowly… on her deathbed. She was…
I closed my eyes, feeling the warmth of tears streaming down my cheeks.
I was crying by the main door, alone in the night. My whimpers were silent as I pleaded with God. I begged, traded her life for her pain to end. I just wanted it to stop… even if it meant she had to go.
Yes… I begged for her death… I had prayed.
She lay on the other side of the wall, motionless, trapped in her own body. Bedsores festered under her frail frame… painkillers dulling but still not erasing her agony. Multiple tubes entering and exiting her body — one to feed, another to drain.
“You were in terrible pain…” I tried to explain, my voice trembling as my body did. My legs felt weak… and the ground beneath me seemed to give way, sliding out… or it was never a solid thing underneath... ever…
Fear nibbled at my anxiety… slowly at first… then it seemed devouring me whole. Fear of this unknown place, fear of the dark, fear of being dead — or worse, of seeing her again, of facing her.
“You know I loved you,” she whispered.
“And I loved you more than anyone,” I cried… my voice breaking. I didn’t know if she was crying too. Can the dead even cry? But her voice carried pain… deep and resonant. Why was she still in pain? I had asked God to end it… to take her pain away. I wanted peace for her.
But maybe pain follows us, carrying over from life to death… tangled with disappointment, desolation, and dreams.
I think there is nothing anything like peace… Even the Rest in peace is an utopian word … like the Utopian world of Peter Pan…
That night, I begged for her peace, for the pain to end, believing in a literal “Rest in Peace,” the only comfort I knew.
“Love doesn’t wish harm…” she said.
But love doesn’t like longing either. Every piece of me toppled, as if in a place where even gravity had given up. There were no stars, no asteroids — just a vast, lifeless void.
In a parallel universe, I had asked my dad if she had another sister, beyond the one I knew.
“Yes, but she passed away long ago, as a child,” he told me, his eyes searching mine. I had just woken from a deep slumber. “But how do you know this, and why are you asking?”
“I saw a dream… there was a room, and inside, an old woman. She looked like her… When I asked who she was, she said she had come to take her sister.”
My dad listened intently, and I felt the words pouring out like beads on a tangled string… weaving… heaving…
“I told her to take the third sister, the older one… the one I knew wouldn’t hurt me.” I paused, catching my breath. “But she said no, it was her time.” My throat felt the lump inside that I tried to push down with breathing in a gulp of air…. but no avail… it was of no avail.
“Dad, is it her time to go?” My voice quivered as my heart twisted painfully. The words clung to my throat, refusing to escape. My dream felt prophetic, a harbinger of something dreadful.
I was still floating in that empty space, where nothing could breathe, where no hand could reach out to save me — a place dead for millions of years.
Space is nothing but a death valley. Stars are ghosts that died long ago, their light a trick of the eye. Asteroids are lifeless rocks drifting nowhere.
All that remains in this pitch-black darkness is pain, longing, guilt, her voice, a wrenching heart, raging disappointments, lost love… and the shattered pieces of a utopian phrase that reads,
“Rest In Peace.”
Your support through claps and appreciation surely means the world to me.
Follow me for more captivating stories that delve into the depths of human experience and imagination.
Thanks.
