The Third Year

It was an early Monday morning. The sun had not yet risen. I fell asleep while doing French homework. It was three years ago. But it feels like more.

The hall was silent. The house was silent. The room beside me was silent. It was like that for a week. No footsteps traversing through the house, no signs that another person lived in the house...

No sickly coughing echoing through my house. No, I could not hear the deathly coughing that had plagued our thoughts for months, that had plagued her for years.

That day was silent and it would remain that way. I woke and sat up in bed. And I stared at nothing.

Nothing sounded. There was nothing that triggered my awakening. It was dark. It was quiet. I merely woke up, sat up, and that was that.

Then the silence broke. It was still dark when the phone rang. I instinctively walked into my parents' room. My mother sat up. She knew it too. My father picked up the phone. It was my uncle, my mother's brother, my grandmother's son. He called to inform us, and my father relayed the message to us.

Then I wept. I wept and I slept and that was all I did that day.