This was the first time I had to visit someone who had lost a loved one, and I was accompanied by a friend. Our classmate lost his father and hadn't been to school for a week. While we all sat in their living room, his mother made us laugh, offered us peanuts, and shared the essence of what a teacher had recently tormented our lives with. I was 13 years old.
I have never forgotten that day. It quickly became a core memory, but it wasn't until I was an adult that I understood why.
This was the beginning of the longest-lasting things in my life on Earth.
My second condolence visit was also with a friend, at another classmate's home. After a brief illness, she lost her mother, which shocked me. Having suffered this loss, she became an orphan, as her father had passed away ten years earlier.
"I am sorry for your loss."
As we sat around their large living room, we were mostly quiet. We were caught between blooming in college and being teenagers and adults, so we struggled to laugh and were uncertain about what to say. Then, other adult visitors, friends of her mother, began to come forward. They made her recount the story of the sudden illness over and over, then raised their hands to the sky, going up and down, making sounds like -Oh! My God! Why? ehyaaa! ewooo! - and then left shortly after.
After a while, I walked out of the living room with the friend who had passed away. Among all of us present, I was the only one who had also lost a parent, and she knew that. She told me she was exhausted from all the grief and hoped that everything our class and all the lecturers did would be done to the fullest. I was 19 at the time. We laughed so loudly throughout the night that her siblings came to check on us several times.
I don't remember the third, fourth, fifth, or tenth, but I know the frequency of these condolence visits increased significantly and rapidly. No, it wasn't because the world was sick and the Earth was consuming us. It could also be. Instead, it was because I got...