Fade Into You

Trigger warning. Please don’t read this if you’re triggered by death.

I’m listening to the live version of Fade Into You by Mazzy Star on YouTube as I write this. Similar to how many of us discover new music in 2023, it was the background track on a reel that tugged at my heart strings.

I am a complete and utter romantic. I love love and I’ll always love love.

If you’re not one, this is one letter you should probably skip. It’ll be soft and it’ll be be dark and if this is not your thing, here’s your last warning.

Today is a gloomy day. 

The sky isn’t trying. It’s dark and cloudy. The air is cold. It’s not hard to tell that the sky is pregnant with rain. The dark clouds remind me of a woman who just lost the love of her life. As she stands at his tombstone, holding her two-year old who is strangely calm, sucking on a lollipop, blissfully unaware that a part of her heart just died, she sees her world shatter.

She holds back the tears. She holds them in just as the sky holds the rain. Now is not the time.

But as you can see glimpses of rain in the sky, signs of tears are written all over the woman’s face. Just as the atmosphere is cold and gloomy, the woman’s fingers are deathly cold and the eyes, that stare intently at the tombstone which reads 1994-2023, are almost overflowing with grief. 

There are days where you know you can take on anything. You wake up pumped, ready to crush any obstacle because you’re aware that life is short and you have to seize the day. The adrenaline is overwhelming.

And there are days that are just like the voice of the woman who is singing Fade Into You.

Her voice is soft, almost carried by the guitarist, it’s lazy, it draws out. You want to fall into it and live there, to crawl up in that cocoon. You seek out permission to rest and you almost want to cry because you’re tired but you know this life is up to you. You’re holding everything up and it’s like no one can see the weight of everything you’re juggling.

Even when you take a break, you can’t completely let go because you know everything will fall apart the minute you release that grip. It’s simply not an option.

So you have to look fine, you have to learn to smile, show the world that you are capable because even though they ask how you are, they don’t really want to know. Nobody has the time to listen. Just as you have your baggage, they have theirs.

So you silently carry on.

You trudge on.

You heave your suitcase in silence, in a world of people silently heaving theirs.

The woman’s knees, peeking beneath the black lace dress she is wearing, buckle a little. Despite wearing the flat grey shoes her mother recommended for comfort, her feet ache. It feels like they’re going to burst loose from the sides. 

“Mommy!”

Her eyes remain fixed on the tombstone but a tug pulls her attention. She blinks at the girl at her side. Her daughter’s scrunched up face is telling her something.

She blinks again.

With the hand holding the lollipop, her daughter signs that the grip is too tight. It’s then that she realises that she’s been squeezing her daughter’s chubby hand.

She swallows and loosens her grip. She’s fine. She musters up a smile down at her daughter.

Until the sky opens up. Giving her permission.

The woman crumbles by the tombstone and mimics the sky.

Rainwater and tears mix. There is no distinction. They are both mourning. Here there is no pretence any longer. She howls and is grateful for the deafening silence she was blessed to go through life with.

She cannot hear her own cry. Or the pitter patter of the rain.

All she can hear is the terrifying silence of loss.

It’s the same silence that enveloped her two weeks later as she was dragged down by a huge rock, after she threw herself off the 3rd mainland.

She’s never once asked to hear. 

But as she was dragged down the cold depths of the Lagos lagoon to her death, the only thing she wanted to hear was Mommy.