Cold

As he stood there in the cold, sterile ICU, he felt a chill run through his body. It wasn’t the cold of the room that he felt, it was the chill of loss that he felt in his heart.

He stood there staring at the monitors that were beeping. He couldn’t see her as her bed was surrounded by doctors and nurses fighting to bring her back. He knew she was fighter abs she would fight till the very end. But was this the end of it all, he never knew.  “Que sera sera, whatever will be will be, the futures not ours to see, que sera sear!”

And then heard the a beep and the monitor flatlined. And with that he felt a cold ice stabbing through his heart. It was all over. As the doctors and nurses cleared her bed, he saw her stomach rise and fall, and for a moment he felt all was not lost.

But the doctors told him what  he feared the most. He began to shiver, not from the cold outside but from the cold he felt inside. He felt weak and all alone, vulnerable and cold.

If he needed to take her remains back home. He had run pillar and post from church to church, raising funds for her treatment. The family sold the little jewellery they had, they had took loans and tried to repay it. But now it was for naught. 

He deposited the remaining cash and cleared the bills. As he stood there, he felt so small. He felt shrunk. The pain he felt left him feeling weak and frail. What remained was a broken man, weary from the shuttling from one pillar to another.

He made the payment and returned back to the ICU. As he opened the door. The cold blast hit and the sterile smell made him feel nauseated. They had taken her off the ventilator she was on, and all the other machines and medication. He saw her lifeless body. All signs of life had gone, and in its place lay a frail lifeless body. Once again he felt the cold. 

He held her hand in his. He felt the coldness that replace the warmth that he had felt when he had held her in his hand, his first born, the one that bestowed the title of father on him. He remembered the warmth he felt when she caught his hand learned to walk, when she had caught his hand when he took her to school. The warmth he felt whenever she hugged him.

As he sat in the ambulance with her earthly remains. This was not how a father should bring his daughter home. He as supposed to walk he down the aisle, not place her remains in a casket.

As he stood by her casket, as they covered her face with a  handkerchief and closed her casket. They slowly lowered her casket in to the grave. Later on as he stood with his family as the people condoled them, he couldn’t get rid of that cold feeling, even when he was shaking warm hands and being embraced by warm bodies. 

That cold he would never be able to shake it off till the day he found himself enveloped in the same cold.