It's a story of loss, but also a reflection on human temporality and connection.
quoting naddr1qq…0c5fThe boy left the piano and ran toward his parents. “Shall we play another song?” In one of those surprisingly magical moments, the three of them were playing together, pretending to be a band: the father with the trumpet, playing distractedly while checking messages on his phone; the mother with the guitar, smiling and listening attentively; the son with the piano, happy. Stumbles in the notes, laughter, joy. “Tomorrow is Monday,” she remembered. They stopped and put away the instruments—they could do it another time. There was time. There’s always more time, right?
That night, like any other on a typical week, they fulfilled the ritual of dinner at eight, a shower before bed, getting the uniform and backpack ready. Afterward, the quick hug to the father and the long kiss to the mother. In turn, the parents continued with their own routine: checking emails, reading for a while. He went to sleep while she logged on to her computer to teach an online class. The nocturnal silence took over the house, interrupted only by the occasional comment from her lesson.
The scream startled her. Was it coming from a neighbor’s house? No, it couldn’t be. That slight sensation in her chest, that anguish… She decided to go see how her only son was doing. When she was about to reach the second floor, she heard some moaning. She ran to the room. Her boy, curled up in a ball, and beside the bed, vomit. The forehead first—it was burning—then the abdomen. Another scream tore through her. The father woke up and approached to ask what was happening. “I don’t know. Go to sleep, I’ll handle it.” How many other times had she said that? Without thinking, without considering the weight of the tacit agreement between them, of the comfortable distance he called space.
She lifted her son in her arms, covered him with a blanket, and took him to the emergency room. The bright lights of triage, the familiar waiting, then nurse, and finally, doctor. She knew the procedure by heart. She was always the one who handled these emergencies, who knew the nurses, who knew his medical history —allergies, previous injuries. “The experience of having an athlete son,” she used to say. During the examination, the boy remained curled up. “It looks like acute appendicitis,” the doctor said. “We need an urgent ultrasound and blood work.”
The mother grew impatient between her child’s suffering and the staff’s slowness. She demanded faster attention, called the nurses over and over. “The CT scan shows perforation with fluid in the abdomen,” she heard afterward. “He needs surgery now.” When they came rushing and took him, while she waited for the results… it had been because of her demands, surely. She never thought she wouldn’t see him again. How could she imagine that emptiness that would take over her chest, to the point of not being able to breathe?
They called the father. He arrived disoriented, like someone arriving in unknown territory, and somewhat worried, not much, because he was used to her taking care of things. The father listened to the doctor’s explanation with a distorted face. “I’m very sorry. There were complications. The perforation caused severe sepsis.” The man let out a scream that echoed throughout the entire hallway: “He died alone, my God, he died alone.” It was the first time in years that he expressed something so profound, and it came too late. A postponed fatherhood concentrated in an instant.
Hadn’t the mother been with her son until they took him away? Or the doctor and staff in the operating room? He didn’t ask about her, didn’t look for her. She wanted to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out. If she hadn’t been at the hospital, perhaps no one would have comforted her in that terrible moment. She moved because she had to, responded because they asked her. From that night she would only remember her son’s face and small hands when she let them go for the last time. Afterward, only the reconstruction of events through the eyes of others: her sister and her parents.
Who thinks about when it will be the last time for anything? The last chess game with the father, the last dinner out with the mother, the last birthday of the favorite aunt. The last frightened squeeze of a small child’s hand. They hadn’t paid attention. Why would they? You always think there’s more time.
The days that followed blurred into a hazy sequence of impossible decisions. Arrangements had to be made. At first, everything seemed suspended, even sadness. A family eclipse where darkness takes everything. You know it’s temporary, but you can’t glimpse the light. The family gropes around like blind people, and slowly grief sprouts. Decisions are made that will be forgotten: how to tell others, who will speak and who won’t. An endless series of unimportant actions in the face of pain invading everything, little by little, to then explode like a volcano. The siblings of both parents and the grandparents crying. The parents in black silence.
The funeral passed. The weeks passed. For the mother, everything was now subordinated to the memory of an ancient life. The habit of picking him up after school or some activity outside, seeing him walk toward the car, seeing him walk away. His voice. His smell. He still smelled like a child—he was still a few months away from his eleventh birthday. He was still her little one. She could take his hand to cross the street, give him a long hug just because, plant a kiss on his cheek. He didn’t impose that distance that comes when children start becoming men. Her boy, the storyteller of the childhood world… had departed.
As the months passed, the father withdrew more and more. He came home later and later, hardly spoke. He avoided talking to her. Sometimes, she found him crying in the boy’s room. The fragility became evident and the limited kindnesses from one to the other disappeared. The one who was barely there was no longer there. The bridge between two solitudes had disappeared. The family had also died, and so, simply, one afternoon, he didn’t return. Without words, without farewell.