A Quiet Goodbye

 The call came late that night. A neighbor's trembling voice shattered his world. "Your mother... she’s gone." He froze, his pen still in hand from filling out forms for the future she had dreamed for him. The train ride home felt endless, yet somehow too short; he dreaded arriving to a house now emptied of her presence.

Her room smelled faintly of lavender, but it was an uneasy scent—one he wanted to soon vanish. He sat by her bed, still made, and whispered, “I’m sorry, Maa… I wasn’t here.” But there was no response, only the silence that had taken her place.

University became a blur. His classmates laughed, celebrated, and spoke of dreams while he sat alone, a shadow among them. Nights were worse. He would lie in his bed, clutching the corner of a pillow, the way he once held her dress when he was a child. Tears streamed down as memories played cruel tricks: her laughter in the kitchen, her soft touch on his forehead when he was sick.

No one understood. "You should focus on your studies," they would say, as if studying could stitch the gaping hole in his heart. The loneliness was suffocating. Each success felt hollow without her to share it. He walked across campus with a mask of composure, but inside, he was screaming.

By his second year, the weight became unbearable. He would sit in the dark of his dorm, staring at the cold blade of a razor or the soft curve of a noose. “What’s the point?” he would whisper to the emptiness.

One night, he found himself whispering to the stars, as if they might carry his words to her. “Maa, I did it. I got an A… but you’re not here to see it.” He broke down, trembling in the quiet that swallowed him whole.

As he drifted into restless sleep, one thought lingered, soft and devastating: “She was my world, and now the world feels unlivable without her.”