Backstage

It was dark. The wind blew through the house like a low menacing growl. The walls crawled with the dark strings of grief and sorrow. The cold air weighed heavily in the house reminding its occupants of its emptiness. His cute giggles still resonated through the house yet he was not here. The sun seemed to have taken its leave. The sky a jagged slate.

It had been months yet it felt like yesterday. The sobs did not stop but they only got quieter. Tears engraved their trail so deep into their faces yet the outside couldn’t see them. The strident screams echo through the walls every night as memories of the little boy accompany her.

Each day was worse. Her sanity slowly slipped from her grasp with every passing minute. Face as pale as the first morning snow. We no longer had our heartfelt conversations. Grousing about taking care of children. There was nothing left to say. I couldn’t relate. I didn’t know how it felt for a billionaire to lose their only child. I couldn’t even imagine. At least that’s what Mary told me. The only sentence she spoke to me after I told her I knew how it felt to lose a child. “It’s the constant reminder with us always in the spotlight”. Even after years, paparazzi still probe and prod on the matter just to write a juicy story. Maybe it is different for the rest of us behind the scenes. After a few months everybody has forgotten and you’re the only clinging to the tenebrous days. And nobody is willing to pull you out of the darkness. Nobody is willing to help but everybody is wishing you would just move on already.

I had been their maid for seven years and had watched the young boy, Felix, grow out of his diapers. I knew him inside out. He adored his parents with every fiber in his being and cherished the time he spent with them. He was a child who loved with no limit and no regret. It was disheartening to see him lay lifeless and unmoving on the road. Struck down by a speeding car. The incision on his head was prominent as the carmine liquid inundated the road. Arms outstretched at an odd angle as if he was begging for mercy.

The funeral was supposed to be short as to not draw unwanted attention but his mother held onto him like he was her last piece of life and letting him go would make all to come crushing down. Her tears cascaded down her cheeks and poured down on the bunched up creases of the black crisp suit that embraced him, hoping that maybe the fairytales were true. That he would feel her warmth, her magic, and her love seep into him and raise him out of the smothering four foot box. My melancholy heart ached in pain as a tear escaped me while I stood at the far end of the tent. Watching as her husband wretched her away from the peacefully sleeping boy, eyes red and tired.  

A sharp pain wedge itself into my chest as anamneses of my late daughter tore through my mind. Holding her close to my chest hoping for a miracle that I knew deep down would not happen. Despite Mary denying it, we were cognate in so many ways. Yet society classified our grief to be of different levels even if the underlying factor was the same. I knew exactly how it felt to be ripped apart, to be stripped of what one loves and left exposed to pain and suffering. To lament for someone so long your heart can’t take any more. The nightmares that haunt you taunting that you could have done better even when it has already been done.

For the following months, people from various walks of life came to give their condolences. And for months they barely spoke. Their eyes were a never ending abyss of stygian blackness weighing you down with languish every time you gaze upon them. The words of visitors falling upon death ears as they single handedly delivered a long discourse on how things will be alright in time and how they should be strong. But how is one supposed to be strong when they are in pain. I wondered whether people learnt how to console someone at the same place. It is never nothing new. The same words ringing in your head day in day out but no one really helping.

It is the constant reminder that torments a grieving person. From Mary’s side it was different from my own. For her, everybody knew the tragic incident and didn’t bother to ask whilst for me, not everyone was aware.

“How is your little girl, Emily?”

“Uh… uh she… passed on”

“I’m so sorry! My condolences”

“Where is Emily?”

“She … passed on a couple of months ago”

“I’m sorry I didn’t know”

It is having to repeat that statement over and over again like a mantra until it finally knocks me into the reality that she was indeed gone.

I didn’t want to assimilate myself to my boss, I was way pass that. But her words buzzed through my head. You don’t know how it feels for a billionaire to lose their only child. I didn’t know whether she was being frank with me, condescending me for my financial state, pointing out that I had other children so it hurt way less or she uttered the words out of grief and she felt like no one understood her pain. It had come to me that she had tried to equate us, seeing who had gone through the most suffering and seeing who is at an advantage just like how society had taught her to do. The rich people’s emotions hold more value than your own because they can pay for ways to express them and for people to listen to them. My grandmother had once told me so and now I had finally witnessed it. Nobody took heed of the people in the backstage even if you were bleeding your guts out they would only notice after the show is over.