She stood there for a moment, staring at his body lying on the floor, expecting for it to move; but it never did. There was absolute silence. Nothing could be heard except the rustling of leaves, as soft breeze gushed past them. It was definitely the longest five minutes of her life. Then suddenly, there was a noise piercing the silence - the siren of an ambulance; which brought her back to the present state.
She had been out since morning; gone for her job, called her husband informing him that she would be late that night; she had a meeting to attend. That was all she said to him. Everything had fall onto routine – she went to her job, attended the meeting, had come home late and everything seemed fine. Until she found her husband lying on the floor, apparently shot twice, once in the leg and again in the chest, with blood spattered all over. There she stood staring at him; she couldn’t make out any sense of what had happened to go and give 911 a call. It was her daughter who had returned home from her friend’s birthday party, who called the emergency people.
The ambulance and the police people arrived. It was not long before they took over the situation completely. Getting hold of what had happened, and on not being able to withstand its impact, she went completely numb. She didn’t utter a word; she stood there and watched, with no expression at all, as her husband was being taken to the hospital. She knew it was too late; yet she watched, not even a single teardrop. All the things seemed so unrealistic her, like she was living a nightmare – an excruciatingly painful nightmare. Suddenly, things got hazy and then black, complete darkness. The next thing she knew she was there, in the hospital. That’s all she remembered happening; or at least that’s what she said to the police.
Her husband had died. She was at the local hospital and was being interrogated. It was 10, 8th October 2009 – the very next day from when the tragedy had happened. She was said, that her daughter had been taken for interrogation, and that she would be returning in an hour. She was also informed that the police is trying hard to solve the reason behind this tragic crime her husband had to witness. She was assured that the police will inform her as soon as they get any news. She was left alone in her ward. That was the first time since everything had happened, that she was all alone. She replayed the scenes over again in her head and then she burst out into tears – she cried for long, until she heard some faint footsteps increasingly getting louder. It had been an hour, it should be her daughter she thought; she felt inappropriate to cry in front of her daughter. Her daughter had already lost her father and was going through a terrible state; now if she saw her mother crying she would be left devastated. So she stopped crying anyhow, and greeted her daughter with rather a blank expression – but on the inside she was in a near-death unbearable pain; but she managed to hide it from everyone.
It was such, that days passed by, then weeks and months. And with that very fake smile and agonizing pain, she lived. For everyone, everything had gone back to normal – but for her it was everything but normal. She never really got over the pain.
With no signs, a year had gone by – it was 7th October again just the 2009 had changed to 2010 now. Her husband’s murder was marked as completely random one, without any motive whatsoever. That day, her daughter had left for college; she was alone in her home. She was cleaning up her husband’s room which she did everyday – little she knew, today was different. She was cleaning up the drawers when she found a diary; it was her husband’s. She, with teardrops rolling down her cheeks, opened it. She went thorough the pages one at a time. She read the whole diary and just as she was about to close it, a piece of paper fell on her lap. She picked it up; it was a photograph – her photograph. She turned it to the back and it read ‘I love you, always did and always will…. Without you I’d die.’
Be it any other day, it wouldn’t have mattered to her. But today it did; it was all she thought about, for hours. She then picked up a note, and a pen; she wrote to her daughter, ‘2406781. Call your aunty. Goodbye.’ That’s all she wrote. Her daughter returned from college at her usual timing, called for her mother, but she didn’t get any response. She walked up to the kitchen and found a note stuck to the fridge. Her daughter hurried to the bedroom but it was too late, at the exact same place her father laid a year ago, she laid. She had killed herself.
