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Dika dies.
Prae’s brother is dead.
It doesn’t feel real - not when she’s standing in front of his body, pale and blue and nothing like her lively brother. It doesn’t feel real when they burn him, collecting the ashes in an urn. It doesn’t feel real when Aye breaks down in her arms, sobbing hard enough to shake.
It feels like a joke, almost. It can’t be real. Prae still turns, sometimes, to make a comment or point out something funny to Dika - but she's only ever met with empty air. Of course.
Of course she is. He’s dead.
But it doesn’t feel real, because the world keeps turning and the sun keeps rising and surely, it cannot be real.
But the truth is what it is and Dika is still dead, no matter how much Prae tries to believe otherwise. The void in her life becomes too big to ignore, and she can’t quite -
Prae swallows it down and keeps moving, keeps living. She doesn’t have a choice. And it hurts, it does, but she can manage it most of the time. It’s what Di would want, she knows that.
Sometimes, though, it all comes crashing down on her.
It's a regular morning and Prae goes to prepare breakfast, makes enough for three instead of two, and she -
stops.
She has to stop, suddenly overwhelmed, because - Dika isn’t going to eat breakfast anymore. He isn’t here.
Dika is dead.
Her little brother is dead.
Aye finds her like that, crying over burnt vegetables.
-
Prae is used to death. She’s known it all her life.
She still remembers just a few years ago - their dad’s lifeless body and Dika clutching her hand, weeping, while Prae kept greeting people, gritting her teeth hard enough for her jaw to ache.
He has - had - always been the most sensitive one.
It’s something like this - Prae is acquainted with death. But losing her little brother is like losing a part of herself, and she doesn’t know how to wrap her head around it. She finds little pieces of her life, scattered and broken and she doesn’t know how to live like this.
But she still has Aye - who is grieving and hurt and -
-
Eyes wide, Aye hurriedly guides her to a chair. “Mom? What happened?” He's dressed in his school uniform - his new school, and he looks so much older it makes Prae’s throat tighten. Aye is -
-
Losing Dika leaves Prae feeling unbalanced, like an off center planet. She loses her gravity, her stability, and she wonders how long it will take before she stops feeling so dizzy.
Losing Dika leaves Aye incapacitated.
He doesn’t leave his room for almost a week after the funeral, and Prae can’t do anything but uselessly wring her hands. She tries to cheer him up the best she can, but she’s grieving too. And she knows - grief isn’t something that can be ignored. She cannot make everything better for Aye, no matter how much she wants to.
And Prae knows her son. She knows he’s strong enough to go through this. But still…
She hopes it’s enough.
-
Reaching for a smile that doesn’t quite sit right on her face, Prae shakes her head. “I’m okay.” She is. She isn’t. She doesn’t quite know.
Di is dead.
-
She gets so many calls. It’s like she’s being read a script - condolences, apologies, prayers. Prae is almost tempted to turn her phone off, if only to avoid the hollow words - they won’t help Dika now, so what use are they?
-
“Mom,” Aye starts, eyes (so much like Di’s) soft with concern. “What is it? You can tell me. Please.”
-
The thing about losing someone you love is that it doesn’t happen all at once. It happens in small pieces - in clearing out rooms and rearranging dining tables and forgetting to shut down accounts and sitting in your bedroom in the dark wondering why the tears won’t come.
The thing about losing Dika is that Prae loses a part of herself too.
-
Prae hesitates.
-
It’s something like this - Prae had loved Dika. But Aye had loved him too.
She isn’t alone.
-
“I just thought of Di,” she forces out. “It’s okay.”
It’s not, not really. But -
-
He left her behind. Dika left her behind.
It’s so, so unfair. Prae wants to be mad at him.
She is, a little bit.
-
"Is it really okay?" Aye asks, and Prae - pauses, feels something solid and bitter settle in her chest. It feels like such a strange, strange question - because since Dika's death, people have asked her all sorts of questions and promised her all sorts of things. But not one person has asked her 'are you okay?'.
That's...that was always Dika's job. Making sure she was okay. She did the same for him too.
Or at least she thought she did.
Inhaling deeply, Prae looks at her hands. Is she okay? She doesn't really know. But -
(She thinks of the ache in her chest, ever present and ceaseless, but enough to breathe.
She thinks of Aye, so sweet and strong and wonderful and the best son she could ever ask for.
She thinks of the loneliness that has made a home in the hollow of her bones, a pain that she fears will follow her to her grave.
She thinks of Dika.)
Are you okay?
It’s such a strange question, because she has no answer for it.