"Why is everyone crying?"
That's the question I want to ask the three-year-old me — the girl standing at the edge of a deep hole, in a crowd of wailing strangers, holding sand in her tiny hand.
I was a child like any other. Bright, loud, playful. But something in me — maybe too much awareness, too early — made me different. At two, I could read newspapers, recognize headlines, understand what death meant.
But that day… I didn't know who had died.
I didn't understand why my feet were standing in red earth, staring at a box slowly being swallowed by the ground.
I remember only flashes.
My father collapsing. The rush of feet. The shouting.
And then silence — the kind of silence that lives inside your chest, heavy and hollow.
Someone said it was time. My mother looked at me, handed me a handful of earth.
"Throw it in," she said.
I wanted to ask why.
But her eyes told me not to question. Her eyes always scared me when they hardened like that — like glass about to crack.
So, I obeyed.
The sand slipped from my fingers, falling on top of the box like a goodbye I didn't understand.
That night, home wasn't home.
The air was stiff. The rooms echoed. No music, no laughter. Only whispers and a kind of weeping that felt too old for my small ears.
I looked for something familiar — someone to bring back the feeling of "before."
So, I went to my baby brother, just a year old, sleeping like the world hadn't shifted.
I did what I always did.
Poked him. Disturbed him. Made him cry.
My mother came with that same warning tone — but this time, I didn't run away from her.
I ran to my father's room.
"Daddy!" I called, laughing like before.
But the room didn't laugh back.
It was cold. Still. Gloomy. Empty.
I turned slowly, heart thumping in a rhythm too old for my age.
My mum was behind me, rocking my crying brother.
"Mummy… where is Daddy?" I asked.
She didn't answer right away. And when she did, her voice was made of wet stones.
> "He travelled… far. And he won't be back for a long time."
But I knew she was lying.
I felt it.
Because death, even when you don't understand it, introduces itself by changing the air.
And the air that night —
was different.
That night, I stopped being a child.
I didn't know it yet — but that burial wasn't just for my father.
It was the beginning of burying everything soft, safe… and known.