Here's the thing.

Here's the thing. Here's the thing.

And the thing is,

is that I am a volcano of rage right now.

I am a mass of rage,

of anger,

of pain

right now.

These were the last few days of my dad's life last year.

I am reliving those moments,

those words,

the looks,

the fears,

the utter

and complete

devastation

all over again.

The last cup of tea

I fed you with my hands.

Your desire to get out of there

and write about your hospital experience.

Do you remember daddy?

You had even thought of the title --

"From Doom to Room."

It turned out to be just the opposite.

How ironic.

How fucking,

FUCKING

ironic.

Except.

I can't laugh about it.

I have no sense of humour about this.

He wanted to get out of there

and write about it.

He thought he was getting out of there.

He believed he was getting out of there.

He wanted to write about it all.

About being stuck in a hospital,

in ICU,

about being shifted around many ICUs,

about having all those painful MRIs

and surviving it all --

except,

he didn't.

He never saw it coming.

And neither did we.

And I ended up doing his last rites.

How hard I tried to shake off

all the shittiness

of last year

with a nervous stray thought of hope

only to start off the first day of this year

with another death,

another farewell,

another funeral.

I walked around my grandmother's home

searching for the ghost of my little girl self

in the peeling paint of the walls,

in the faded black-and-white snaps,

the old hibiscus tree from where you got your flowers to adorn your Gods.

They're undressed now,

the Gods

without Their floral tributes.

The flowers hang loosely

and forlornly on the shrubs,

while in the kitchen,

there are memories

of your hustle and bustle

as a lonely cloud of forgotten aromas and fragrances

hovers about in the corner,

trying to keep alive

the love that you dished out to us,

didu.

That house

was where I felt safe,

loved,

pampered,

adored

and so happy.

The emptiness in that house

is so enormous

and never-ending

that there's no way to escape it

and even then

it can't swallow me whole

for I am bigger than that emptiness;

I am full of red-hot rage

and inky-blue pain.

I am a volcano of rage

right now.

I black hole of grief.

Of sorrow.

Of anguish.