Today is a reminder of why I began writing seriously. It has been twenty‑three years, yet it still feels like yesterday. People often say time heals all wounds — I’m not sure I believe that. What I do know is this: time may soften a wound, but it never erases it.
It was a beautiful Sunday, exactly twenty‑three years ago. Three left the house. Only two returned.
My brother took his last breath in the hallways of Korle Bu. That moment changed everything. It split my early adulthood into a before and an after. In the days and weeks that followed the sudden loss of my brother, when the grief was too heavy to carry and the world felt unbearably loud, I turned to writing to ease my pain. It became the only place where the pain could breathe.
I remember one of my very first poems was written after visiting his grave, when the weight of it all felt too much. I’ll share a part of it at the bottom. At the time, I felt so despondent, so lost. In hindsight, I was clinically depressed, though that wasn’t something we spoke about openly back then. So I did what I could: I wrote. I poured the ache somewhere it could live outside my body. I was forced to channel my grief in other ways. Writing became the only way I knew to survive.
Those years taught me many lessons — some hard, some harder still. But it was faith, and love, or even the imagination of love, that carried me through. And every relationship from that season, every person who stood beside me, became a lesson I still hold with gratitude.
This wound may never fully heal in my lifetime, but it hurts a little less each day. And even now, I can still remember the very first day you came into this world. I was only two, but I remember the excitement of having a baby brother to play with. My mother doesn’t believe that memory is real — but I do.
I didn’t get enough time with you, brother. But that was never mine to decide. What I do have are the moments we shared, and I cherish every single one.
Over the years, I’ve learned that almost everything in life is replaceable — except human life. So why don’t we appreciate the people around us while we still can? Why do we wait for tomorrow, when tomorrow is never promised?
Let’s live like today is the last.
Let’s love like we understand how fragile this all is.
Because one day, we will wake up, and someone we love will be gone.
Excerpt from “Gone in a day”
Into the house that shouldda been filled with laughter I walked,
But silence met me in the doorway
In the corridor, the rhythm your smooth, even breathing generated,
Had been substituted by unmelodious music from your throat
I called out your name, but the usual response eluded me
Your still body was all that met my eyes instead
I watched as your comatose body was moved out, yet I was too weak to go with you
In the distance, the sound of the siren disrupted the noiseless Sunday afternoon’s ambiance,
I waited till it faded and yielded to my own heartbeat,
I said a prayer for you and wished God will listen and bring you back to me
Instead, eyes deep with sorrow looked at me from afar as the gate opened
