The Year I Questioned Everything

At the young age of five, I stood on the brink of curiosity when the world felt like a puzzle with too many missing pieces. My youthful mind, ever inquisitive, sought answers to questions I could barely articulate. How did we come to exist? Why were we here? And most perplexingly, why did we have to leave?

A funeral opened the doors to these questions in my mind. I attended it with my mother, Patricia, who held my hand tightly as we moved through the somber gathering. The air was thick with sorrow, voices hushed, eyes downcast. I watched as typically strong and composed adults broke down in tears. The coffin was the centerpiece of everything, a mystery wrapped in polished wood. Someone had been here, laughing, talking, breathing—just like me—and now they weren’t. I didn’t understand how that could be. It felt like a cruel trick like someone had turned off the lights in the middle of a game and refused to switch them back on.

As I lay in bed that night, my mind spun with thoughts too vast for my undeveloped brain. I stared at the ceiling, tracing patterns in its rough texture, trying to make sense of the impossible. Where did people go when they left? Did they float somewhere beyond the stars? Did they stop being? The dizziness came suddenly, like the world was shifting beneath me, making breathing hard. I squeezed my eyes shut, willing the questions to leave, but they clung to me like shadows. I even felt the room swaying back and forth, lifting my body and enabling me to look down at my earthly surroundings.

My curiosity grew heavier over the next few months, tightening my chest. It wasn’t fair, I thought. People lived, laughed, played, and then, without warning, they were gone. I asked my mother questions she could not answer, though she tried her best.

“Most of us return to a good place, son,” she said gently, brushing my hair back one evening as I sat beside her. “It’s like going home.”

“But where is home?” I asked. “And why do we have to go?”

She smiled softly, though her eyes held the weight of her uncertainties. “Some things, we just have to believe.”

That answer did not satisfy me. The belief was not proof. Belief did not explain why someone could be here one day and gone the next. I began asking other adults, hoping for a more concrete answer. Some spoke of an oasis in the sky, a place of light and joy where we would see each other again. Others said life was a cycle, that we came back in different forms. None of these explanations settled my heart. I wanted something tangible that I could hold in my hands and say, “This is the truth.”

There were nights when I lay awake for hours, paralyzed by the thought of one day disappearing altogether. It felt so wrong, so contrary to everything I understood. How could I love, dream, learn, and then suddenly be gone? The finality of it gnawed at me. It was hard to accept that we had to attend school to understand and grasp a wealth of material, but one day, it would all vanish, and we would no longer be able to benefit from the hard work of learning and memorizing all this information.

One day, my mother noticed that I grew quiet, lost in deep thoughts too big for my little head. I remember that this led her to grab my hand tightly as we walked home from the bodega. Then she suddenly stopped, knelt at my level, and smiled.

“Anthony, you’ve been thinking a lot, right?”

I nodded.

She took my hands in hers, warm and strong. “I don’t have all the answers, but I do know this—we are here now. Right now, we are together. Right now, the sun is shining. Right now, you have a belly full of “arroz con pollo,” in a little while, we’ll go home, and you can watch your favorite television show.” Life will never be perfect, but we are all part of the best possible world.

I looked at her, puzzled. I was convinced that she was using a cliché I probably had never heard, but I gave her full credit for trying to alleviate my mental anguish.

“Sometimes, we get so worried about things we can’t control that we forget to enjoy what we have,” she continued. “We don’t know why we’re here or when we’ll leave, but we know we have this moment.”

Her words planted a seed in me that took time to germinate. I didn’t stop wondering about the mysteries of life and death, but gradually, I learned to loosen my grip on the questions that had no answers. Instead, I began focusing on what I could see and feel—the warmth of my mother’s embrace, the taste of piraguas on a hot summer day, and the laughter of my friends as we raced down the street.

By the time a year had passed, I was still curious but no longer afraid. I had reached a quiet understanding: life was meant to be lived, not solved like a puzzle. There would always be things beyond my control, but that didn’t mean I had to let them take away my joy. I learned to accept that, at a young age, I was putting too much pressure on myself to understand and solve all of life’s unknown mysteries. If grownups didn’t have answers to my questions, how could I pretend to have those answers or the ability to solve this mystery?

One evening, as I lay in bed, I stared at the ceiling again. This time, the dizziness didn’t come. I began to accept that although the next day would not reveal the secrets of life, it would at least let me enjoy another day with my loved ones! This enabled me to smile, close my eyes, and sink into a deep sleep as I prepared to embrace whatever tomorrow would bring.