✤, a knock on the door at the end of the corridor
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"didn't you hear the firefighters break down your neighbour's door yesterday ?", says my mother on the phone.
(we're thursday) on monday, when i was coming home from spending the afternoon with my mom, we saw a man roam around the front door of my building. "could you please let me in ? i just want to see if my missing brother is at his place.", he asks me; and despite him sounding genuinely concerned and even giving me the appartment number, a name i had never heard of and the code of the building door i didn't even remember myself, i still opened the door with doubt and wariness on my face. he went up the elevator with me, knocked on the door at the end of my corridor a few times, calling out the same name, and left.
today, we're thursday, and earlier my mom asked me "didn't you hear the firefighters break down your neighbour's door yesterday ?" over the phone. "we noticed that his rent had not been paid for the past 2 months, sent his brother to check on things and apparently he called the firefighters who found him dead. after 2 months, could you believe it ?"
and for some reason i hung up and wept. for some reason i felt a speck of this man i only saw for a few seconds' grief and wept for his brother whose name i had first heard on monday. i have heard enough stories, from mothers, sisters, aunts, friends and daughters, to be wary of men, but i still felt incredible guilt for doubting a man whose brother had been dead for 2 months, a few doors away from mine. death is sudden and ever so present, and so is guilt.
i felt the same overwhelming guilt when my grandmother passed January 2023, because the nights before i heard my mother's shaky voice over the phone, i can still see myself thinking "what if they call me to tell me the worst news", and doing my damn's best to push away the thoughts about standing next to a coffin with my eyes fixed to the floor. a trick of the mind that was just giving me a glimpse into what my reality was going to be the next week after that phone call. oh how guilty i felt, and oh how my loved ones felt it too, the guilt, the regrets, the "what if"s and the "i should've"s.
a few doors from me, a man i didn't even was, was no more, and today all i could think about was me doubting his worried brother.
"what is grief but the traces of love that last"
pov the first post i do is about death ! this is SICKENING also, song i've been playing on repeat for 3 days that definitely does not help (written about a mouse killed by the artists' cat) vienna
after sharing this post with my friends, i talked about guilt and grief for a while with misha and remembered a quote from one of my favourite books that had stuck with me.
"but maybe every day we let grief in we'll also let a bit out and eventually we'll be able to breathe again" - scene 3, act 6, if we were villains, M.L. Rio