Suffering

The rain had been falling for three days straight, soaking the village in a gray sadness. Sady sat by the window, her finger tracing invisible shapes. She could still hear her father’s laugh in the empty house, though he had been gone for months now. Greif had a way of echoing, replaying memories until they felt sharper than reality.

Her mother moved quietly in the kitchen, as if any sound lounder than a whisper will break any strength remaining. The house smelt faintly of smoke and boiled rice, bit nothing could mask the heaviness that clung to it’s walls.

“Suffering doesn’t last forever,” her grandmother had once told her, resting a hand on her shoulder. “So don’t get scared when it feels endless.”

Sady thought about that as she stared at the puddles forming outside. She remembered her father’s hands, rough from work but gentle when he held hers. The suffering was in the absence, in the silence, and in the little spaces where he should’ve been.

And yet, one afternoon, she found herself laughing. It was accidental, sudden. Her brother had slipped on the wet floor, his arms flailing like a bird learning to fly, and for a second, joy cracked through the gloom. The laugh startled her, it felt almost wrong, like betraying her grief. But her mother looked up from the kitchen, eyes tired yet soft, and whispered, “He would’ve wanted us to laugh.”

In that moment, Sady realized that suffering was a cage bit a passage. It will always be part of her but it did not have to consume her. As the rain eased and light filtered through the clouds, she understood that healing did not mean forgetting, it meant learning to carry the sorrow and the laughter together.

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