Sunset

Outside, the sun was sitting low on the horizon.

He hadn't said more than a few words when he returned from the hospital in many hours. She had been mindful of not disturbing him, occasionally giving him a hug and saying that she loved him. She wasn't sure what else to do. Every now and again, he would let out a loud, broken sign, as if the sorrow that was growing dark and silent inside him was trying to escape.

She had been crying as well, when she thought he was out of hearing, conscious not to compound her own sorrow upon his.

Outside the window, the dusk crept nearer.

She served him dinner, almost automatically and without expecting him to eat. Food is love, and her notion to feed his sorrow away was almost as desperate as it was futile. He stared at his plates for about 30 minutes before he moved over to the couch, still with that vacant, glazed look on his face.

Oliver placed his happy, three year old face in his lap, happily chatting away about cars and trains but she could see that he could sense something was wrong. He would always babble when he could sense something was wrong.

In retrospect, the signs were all there. They had refused to see them, didn't want to see them. The loss of apetite, the lethargy, the sudden weight loss. "You look great" people would say, not knowing what was behind it all. They had hung onto the hope that it was a nothing, then that the something detected was a minor something, that could be removed, kind of like a battery that had run out of juice. A scare, an anecdote that they would be able to retell as a cautionary tale with a happy ending once it was done and dusted.

The evening star was visible through the curtains nobody remembered to draw this evening.

She bathed the children, absent mindedly chatting to Oliver as she got him ready for bed. When she returned to the sitting room, he had retired to the master bedroom, shivering under two sets of quilts.

She lay next to him, stroking his hair gently and singing softly. They lay like this for a long time, clinging to each other like two children, fearing the dark.

When he started sobbing, she felt a combination of relief and an inexplicable fear, as if him finally crying was the catalyst of unspeakable horrors. The guttural sound emaning from him was like a scream at a bottomless precipice, an ancient and primal, pure and raw pain clawing its way into our world. The sound of a thousand, million hearts, breaking at once.

-"But she is my mummy" he said, between the sobs. "What will I do without her?"

Outside, the sun had finally set.