She stood there for a moment, staring at his body lying on the floor, expecting for it to move, but it never did. There was absolute silence. Nothing could be heard except the rustle of leaves , as winds gushed by them. It seemed the longest five minutes of her life. Then suddenly, there was a noise piercing the silence - the siren of an ambulance; which brought her back to the present state.
She had been out since morning; gone for her
job, given her husband a call informing him that, she would be late that night,
she would be going out at her friend’s engagement party. And that was all she
said to him; not even a ritualistic 'Love you'. Everything had fallen onto
routine – she went to her job, then to the engagement party, had come home late
and everything seemed fine. Until she found her husband lying on the floor,
shot twice, once in the leg and again in the chest, with blood spattered all over
his body. There, she stood staring at him; she couldn't gather
up the sense to go and give 911 a call. It was her daughter who had returned
home late, who called the emergency people. And so they reached.
The ambulance and the police people arrived. It was not long before they took over the situation completely. Getting hold of what had happened, and on not being able to withstand its impact, she became absolutely numb. She didn’t speak a word; she stood there and saw with no expression at all – not even a single teardrop. All the things seemed so unrealistic, like she was living a nightmare – a nightmare excruciatingly painful from within. Suddenly, Things got hazy and then black; complete darkness. The next thing she knew she was here. – and that’s the last thing she remembered that day; or at least that’s what she said to the police.
Her husband had died. She was at the local hospital and was being interrogated. It was 10 a.m., 8th October 2009 – the very next day from when the tragedy had happened. She was said, that her daughter had been taken for interrogation, and that, she would be returning in an hour. She was also informed that the case of her husband is being solved, and the police will inform her as soon as they get any news. All the regulatory mumbo jumbo she could care less about. She was left alone in her ward. That was the first time since everything had happened, that she burst out into tears – she cried for long, until she heard some footsteps. It had been an hour, it should be her daughter, she thought; she felt inappropriate to cry in front of her daughter. Her daughter had already lost her father and it was the time she needed her mother most. So she stopped crying anyhow, and greeted her daughter with rather a blank expression all the while on the inside she was in a near-death unbearable pain; but she managed to hide it from everyone.
It was such, that days passed by, then weeks and months. And with that very fake smile and agonizing pain, she lived. For everyone, everything had gone back to normal – but for her it was everything but normal. She never really got over the pain.
With no signs, a year had gone by – it was 7th October again just the year had changed, it was 2010 now. her husband’s murder as completely random robbery gone wrong. Her daughter had left for college; she was all alone in her home. She was cleaning up her husband’s room which she did everyday – little she knew, today was different. She was cleaning up the drawers when found a diary -- her husband’s. She, with a teardrop trickling down, opened it and went through the pages. She stumbled onto their wedding photo and on the back, her husband’s writing, ‘I love you. I have since the first time I laid my eyes on you and I shall love you till I close my eyes for the last time...’.
Be it any other day, it might have mattered less. But today it did; it was all she thought of, for hours and hours. She then picked up a note, and a pen; she wrote to her daughter, ‘242-540-6597. That's your aunt. Call her.’ That’s all she wrote. Her daughter returned from school, called for her mother, but no one replied. She walked up to the kitchen and found her mother lying on the floor with the note in hand; at the exact same spot that her father did a year ago – she had killed herself.
