My sister,

My little one,

I’ll see you in the morning.

We, the left, do what we do; what we should do. We weep and mourn. We grieve for a while until a moment of recollection loosely sets in. We slowly blend into an indistinguishable quietness that washes over us. From then, every thought is a question in disbelief. Every bits of it are a series of descending images of our beloved. I hear sighs, then I see teary eyes; red eyes. There is that one lady in the corner, who has her face buried in her lap. The more she tries to hold it in, the more her torso breaks over and over again.

Oddly welcoming people to sorrow in the middle of the night, her father stands at the gate. He greets people with a nod and a firm handshake, his other hand holds a cigarette. He had quit six months ago, after another tragedy had befallen him. He blankly stares at the ground for a while, as his almost forgotten cigarette slowly dwindles; the ash slowly becomes loose and paler, with a red dying flame right above it.

Seated on the other side of the corner, her mother stares at everyone coming in. She attempts a faint smile whenever she greets someone. Minutes later, she stands up and starts to pace about. After half a dozen times, she utters her name, it is an almost whisper. An old woman holds her hands in the air and slaps them on her thighs.

The pacing narrows down. She quietly buries her face in both her palms with a white handkerchief tangled in her fingers. Everyone shifts their gaze to stare at her. Much as she wants to give her space, her older sister’s protective instinct kicks in, she stands up and slowly walks up to her right in time before she loses her knees to the ground, screaming out her daughter’s name, as loud her lungs will let her, as many times as she can.

It is a distinct wail; a wail of irreplaceable loss.