The Accident

          Shrouded with creepers and perpetually engulfed in shadows, the old gate of the cemetery in our small town creaked as I slowly pushed it open. The afternoon sun was beating down on me vociferously, as I made my way along the cobbled path. A deathly silence and stillness had found permanent inhabitance in the cemetery. I was feeling a mixture of emotions; sorrow, regret and a sort of loneliness, that completely enveloped me as I walked down the path. Finally I reached my sad destination, my mother’s grave. As I set down the white lily I had picked myself, my eyes grew moist even though I had tried so hard to be strong. My knees gave away beneath me and as I gazed upward toward the clear skies, my vision blurred with tears, I felt closer to her than I ever had after that fateful accident.

        The accident took place on Friday, the twenty-ninth of October, two thousand and ten. A day that forever would be imprinted in my mind. It started out normally enough. I argued with my mother in the morning before school about the party I wanted to go for that night. Like a typical teenager, I screamed and shouted, and ranted and raved disturbing the calmness that had so strangely surrounded our generally noisy house. My mother had patiently listened to me, and then in a tone that was firm, but with gentle words she logically explained to me, that going to the party was not advisable. Of course I didn’t see reason, and I stormed out of the house, refusing to look at her when she waved goodbye. Little did I know, that was her final goodbye.

      Though I was unaware of it, that morning my mother was going to the supermarket to buy groceries and other necessary items. Her eyesight had grown weak, though she never accepted it; she had never paid heed to our warnings, looking back, I wish I had tried harder to convince her to wear spectacles. A drunken truck driver, driving at an obscene speed at the intersection was all it took for my mother’s minivan to be converted into rubble, all in the fraction of a second. She never saw him coming. The next thing I remember was when my frantic father called my school to notify me about my mother’s accident. She was taken by a good Samaritan, who had been passing by, to the nearest hospital where she was declared dead on arrival. When I arrived at the hospital lobby the first person I saw was my father, the deep sorrow and agony that had overpowered the usual cheerfulness of his eyes, made me understand the situation. I ran straight into his familiar arms and stayed there for what seemed like eternity. My hands had grown cold with the shock and a feeling of great loss, sadness and pain completely conquered me. ‘DOA’ or ‘Dead on Arrival’, those were the three simple words the hospital had used on my mother’s report, three words that changed my life forever.

      The next few days were a blur; I was in a trance, completely possessed by the growing sadness and pain that was spreading through my body. Even when I was surrounded by relatives and friends, I felt isolated, abandoned and alone. It was a feeling that only I completely understood. The shock of my mothers passing away had mentally paralysed me. I was only physically present; mentally I longed to be in the warm arms of my mother, to see her smiling face just one more time, to hear a calming voice just once; that was the only cure to the wound in my body. A cure that I would never obtain. The regret of not turning around when she said goodbye to me, the regret of arguing with her that day, is a regret that I will have to live with forever. A regret that would never fade away into the timeless seas of oblivion. I was plunged in a deep well of agony, and I never thought I would ever find my way out of it.

      But gradually, like a ray of sunshine, the path was drawn in front of me. I learnt the cruel lessons of life. I learnt how to move on and accept, but to never forget. It was tough, and several obstacles were thrown my way, but I eventually overcame them and slowly put back my life, which fate had so cruelly torn apart.

Today, a year after my mother’s death, I knelt beside her grave with moist eyes, and whispered into the silence, “I love you mom.”