"The Last Embrace" by Pragyan Parui
Genre: fiction, grief, loss
The city was quiet that night, its usual chaos muted by a light drizzle. Anaya sat cross-legged on her bed, the soft glow of a desk lamp casting shadows that stretched and shrank across her bedroom walls. The rain tapped against her window like a heartbeat. In her lap rested her diary, its leather cover worn smooth from years of use. She flipped it open to a black page, pen poised, and hesitated.
She finally wrote:
"It's been three months, Mom. The house still smells like you, but it doesn't feel like home anymore."
Her handwriting wavered, the ink pooling where her pen lingered too long. A trembling sigh escaped her lips, and she continued:
"You always said I'd be strong enough to face anything. But you never told me how to face this -- how to face life without you."
The words blurred as tears filled her eyes. She set the pen down and pressed the heels of her hands into her sockets, willing herself not to cry.
Her mother had been everything: the sun in her small universe, the laughter that woke her in the mornings, the warmth in ever hug. Even when her father had grown distant -- his attention swallowed whole by his work -- her mother had been there to make the silencce bearable.
But life had other plans.
Image Description: A hand scrawls words across lined notebook pages. The pen used is old-fashioned with a sharp, metal tip. Dark lighting gives the image a soothing, thoughtful air.
Credit: Eugene Chystiakov / Unsplash
The diagnosis had come fast, a whirlwind of hospital visits, whispered conversations behind closed doors, and the haunting smell of antiseptic. Her mother had fought valiantly, smiling even on the worst days, whispering promises Anaya desperately wanted to believe:
"I'm not going anywhere, my love. I'll always be with you."
But one rainy night, Anaya woke to find her gone.
The house became a shell of itself after her mother's death. Dust gathered on forgotten picture frames, the air heavy with things left unsaid. Anaya's father retreated deeper into himself, his presence reduced to the creak of his study door and the clink of ice in a whiskey glass.
"Dinner's on the table," he would mutter without meeting her eyes before disappearing into his sanctuary.
At first, Anaya tried. She knocked on his door with shy offerings: a cup of tea, a movie they used to watch as a family. But his responses were curt, his patience brittle.
"We all have to move on, Anaya," he said one evening, his voice as cold as the untouched plate of food she'd left for him.
"He doesn't care, Mom," she wrote in her diary that night. "He doesn't even notice me anymore. Sometimes I wonder if he sees me at all."
School wasn't much better. The first few weeks after her mother's death, her friends had circled her with cautious concern. There were awkward hugs, well-meaning but hollow words like "I'm here if you need anything," and invitations to hang out that she always declined. Grief, she quickly learned, was too heavy for others to carry for long. They drifted away, one by one, leaving her to sit alone at lunch, her headphones blocking out the world.
Her teachers noticed her slipping grades but chalked it up to an "adjustment period." No one asked the right questions. No one stayed long enough to see past her empty smiles.
One evening, while cleaning her room, Anaya found a folded note tucked inside the pages of her favorite book. The handwriting stopped her breath. It was her mother's, the ink slightly faded but the words as vivid as ever:
"For my darling Anaya, who shines brighter than the stars. Never forget how loved you are."
Anaya pressed the note to her chest, her eyes closed, heart aching with both love and sorrow. For a fleeting moment, she felt her mother's presence again -- a warmth that filled the cold, empty spaces inside her.
But that warmth faded too quickly. Her father forgot her birthday that year. It was a quiet Sunday, the kind her mother would have turned into a celebration with balloons, cake, and laughter. Anaya woke to an empty house. Her father left no note, no acknowledgment of the day.
She spent the afternoon in silence, eating a stale slice of break and staring at the framed photo of her mother on the mantel. By evening, the ache in her chest had turned into a hollow void.
That night, Anaya climbed to the rooftop, the only place that felt close enough to her mother. Her diary was clutched tightly in her hands, its pages filled with all the words she could never say out loud.
The stars blinked indifferently above her as she sat on the edge, her bare feet gripping the cold metal railing. The wind tugged at her hair, the oversized sweater billowing around her slight frame. She flipped through the diary, rereading her entries.
"I keep thinking about the things you won't get to see," one entry said. "You were supposed to be there when I graduated, when I fell in love, when I got married. Now, it's just...me. Alone."
She turned to the last page and wrote:
"I miss you, Mom. I don't know how to keep going. If you're out there...please, give me a sign."
Her pen trembled, the final period smudging under the weight of her hand. She closed the diary and held it against her chest, tears streaming freely, now. The wind whispered in her ears, carrying the fain scent of rain.
And then she heard it. A voice, soft and familiar, like a memory returning from a dream.
"Anaya."
Her eyes snapped open. She turned her head, but the rooftop was empty. The voice hadn't been real -- it couldn't have been. Yet something in it made her pause.
Her grip on the diary faltered, and it slipped from her hands. She watched it fall, landing with a dull thud on the rooftop below. It lay open, pages fluttering like wings.
Anaya stared at it, her mother's note echoing in her mind: "You shine brighter than the stars."
She gripped the railing tighter, her knuckles white. The wind pressed against her back, urging her forward -- or was it holding her steady?
The stars above seemed to flicker, their cold light piercing through the darkness. For the first time in months, Anaya didn't look away.
The railing was cold beneath her hands. She didn't let go.
About the Author
Pragyan Parui is a high school student and a pediatric Crohn's patient. You can read more of Pragyan's work on Neobook.
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