![](https://images.ecency.com/DQmegsPyTzxjLQngDcXv95rd36U4Rd7hFoHrAbou83RbPps/1749644199182.jpg)



---

It still feels like raw, even after five years. She felt it like a sharp pain in her chest and in her heart, she feels it like a hand ripping off her heart from of its place. It was fresh and raw, this wound deep in her soul.

Maria tried to recall what happened five years ago and how her whole life had crumbled in one moment, but she shut it out instantly, it was too much pain, to remember.

---

The Zoom call had ended for everyone else, but Maria lingered, staring at her black screen. She hadn’t meant to say anything aloud, but the words slipped out of her mouth like vapor from a cracked jar.

“You shouldn’t have left me, Mario.” She whispered brokenly as she placed her hands over her face.

There was silence as she sobbed quietly.

Then, an unfamiliar voice, soft, male, almost childlike, whispered through her laptop speaker.

"Stop crying please!"

"I thought I was on mute,” she mumbled to herself as she tried to mute the voice. She clicked to check the meeting recording out of instinct. 

Her heart raced, her apartment was quiet. Her laptop was not glitching, no open tabs, no audio file playing.

Playback.
Mute sign.
No sound until that single whisper.

“But I came back. Didn’t you hear me crying in the rain?” That voice again.

She froze. She was sure her mic had been muted.



---

That night, sleep came in fits. Dreams flooded in: a boy running through the square, laughter spilling like honey, then a man's screams, followed by a woman’s. An accident scene. Then the rain.


---

In the morning, Maria called her mom.

“Mom, I feel Mario is trying to connect to me, what do I do?” she asked, voice cracking.

"You have to stop grieving Maria, it's been five years....

The phone clicked.

She didn't want anyone telling her to stop grieving, no, not even her mom.

Mario was her only child, having lost her husband in a flood accident before his birth, drowned during a storm that was first of its kind. She was still grieving when Mario was born, but as soon as she held him in her arms, she became besotted, he became her world and her sorrows were lessened.

Then tragedy struck again! By his school gate, 8-year-old Mario had been hit by a car that had lost control. She had just dropped him off ten minutes earlier and was trying to manoeuvre her way through the traffic to her office when her phone started ringing. She decided to get off the traffic before picking it up as she didn't like taking calls while driving. When the calls became insistent, she quickly packed and picked it up.

It was the head teacher of Mario's school. At first she thought he must have forgotten his lunch box in the car but it wasn't there.

"Please come over to the school, immediately." Then the line went dead.

She was alarmed by the tone and quickly rushed down.

Mario had seen his best friend crossing the road from the opposite direction and had decided to wait for him by the gate so they could go into the school compound together. Otherwise, he had no business being there when the accident occurred.

She lost him, and died along with him. Nothing else mattered, she just went through each day like a zombie, empty, void.

The dreams kept coming. Every night, more vivid, more real. He was growing, older each night.

In one dream, he stood before her, about thirteen now, holding a laptop. He had always been fascinated by laptops.

“You didn’t hear me before,” he said. “But now I have a voice again.”




---

She began seeing Mario everywhere, In shadows, on the bus. Reflected in glass, sometimes, she swore she saw his reflection on tiled floors.

One day, at an orphanage she was helping fund, a boy no older than eight tugged her skirt.

“Aunty, you talk in your sleep,” he said solemnly.

She knelt, shaken. “How do you know that?”

“You called my name Mario, but that’s not my name.”

Maria smiled and muttered something incomprehensible as she took her leave.


"Light candles for him each night so he can rest, and then you won't have to talk in your sleep again."

It was the same boy!

---

That night, she placed candles besides Mario's framed portrait.

Then she lit them.

“Mummy would always love you, for all eternity, rest on my beloved son,” then the tears came in streams.

A wind stirred. The flame of the candles leaned but didn’t go out.

She tried to smile through her tears because she knew that now, he was finally at rest.



---



🌸My Motto is work at making yourself proud of yourself.🌸


Thank you very much for taking time to read me. Have a wonderful day!