‘I’m here, wherever you’re’, said she standing in a graveyard full of people she didn’t know. But she was standing there; peaceful, quiet, melancholic and reflective. She thought to herself; these people have no paths left to choose, no experiences to gain, nowhere to go and wondered how it would feel like to lie still like that, still breathing, still feeling every gust of wind, every drop of rain, every ray of sun, yet as if nothing mattered anymore.

She sat there for a few hours, even slept under the shade of the trees and remembered the life she had left behind. She was not broken; far from it, she was just awakening. She just knew that her life had taken a turn and she didn’t quite know where it would take her next. She refused to believe in the school of thought that actions of her past would somehow have a say in unfolding events of her future; not in my case, she continued to re-iterate. She was confident yet vulnerable, ambitious yet nonchalant and lively yet cold. Something in her did not fit and she tried very hard to find the missing block of the jigsaw puzzle. She screamed at the universe for making her this way but then thanked the universe for making her this way. ‘Paradox’, she mumbled.

Her thoughts were broken with the screeching of the gates of the cemetery. She wondered who had come at this odd hour. At first she only saw a shadow; a very small one. It was a moonlit night and as the shadow approached further, she was surprised to find a little boy walk in. The boy walked hesitatingly, as if afraid, of the eeriness of the cemetery. But the determination of the boy showed. He was unaware of her presence and she was careful enough not to spook him. From what she could tell, this was not the first time the boy was entering this cemetery. He quietly made his way to a grave, left something like a piece of paper and quietly made his way out.

This sparked her curiosity. She waited until the boy had disappeared from her sight and walked over to the grave. She picked up the piece of paper and hesitated a while. But her curiosity got the better of her and she opened the letter. It just said ‘Hi Mom, I made it through another day. Miss you’. Tears rolled down her eyes and rested on her cheeks. She cursed herself for not seeing the boy or meeting him or hugging him. In a world where surreal is difficult to find, here was a boy who spoke to his mother every day to tell her that he was okay so she knows wherever she is.

She put the letter back on the grave and got up to leave when a thought struck her. She pulled out her phone and booked a ride to her favourite nightclub and waited for her cab to arrive. She was not dressed for the place but she didn’t care. When she arrived, she smiled past the bouncers into the nightclub. After checking in her coat and bag, she went straight to the dance floor. She hadn’t been to the club in a while but as soon as she entered, the place began to live up to her. Acknowledgements came thick and fast from DJs, bartenders, stewards and managers alike and she took them all in her stride. The tempo of the music shifted and she began to breathe. The emptiness of the heart began to fade away, ideas began to float freely like they were air. She recalled the walk of the child with the letter in his hand and began to dance.    

When she returned home in the wee hours of the morning, she went straight to her study and began to draft her will. She made the tough call of removing her children as heirs to the empire she had built, relinquished herself of the control and left the decision to the board to choose the successor. Once the job was done, she asked her driver to drop her at the cemetery. It was time for her to face her frailty.