Dear Mama,
When you died, I did not cry.
I did not know how it happened. No one warned me about it. One day, I just came home to find you lying motionless in the living room, transfigured with the preternatural beauty of a Madame Tussauds wax figure.
You were 40, snatched away in the summer of your life by a sudden asthma attack. I was four, and did not yet know what death was.
I stood amidst the sea of grief around me. But my own eyes were dry.
There was not a bruise on your face. There were no wounds on your body. How could I know that you would never hold my hand again, laugh with me, soothe my groans, or wipe away my tears?
How could I know that no one would ever love me so unconditionally and selflessly again?