The Meaning of Her Grief

By Sissi Chen, aged 16

6:00

She had had weak health since childhood, so she seldom went out of her little room in which she spent most of her life in. All her knowledge about the world was accumulated only through reading the sparse books on her shelf, and all she could experience was outside her window. She would regularly look out of her window, hoping to explore more of the world through this only channel. She had been alone since she was a child, and she was always disliked by the others because of her illness. Not able to connect with the world, she often felt herself being enveloped in a thin layer of mist. She thought mist was not so gruesome and dreadful as a starless night, but still it made her feel depressed and bored.

That afternoon she dressed and went to sit beside the window under the falling sunshine. She was watching people laughing and playing in the distance. She suddenly saw him running towards her. He squatted down and picked up a ball under her window frame. He greeted her curiously and then complimented her on her dress. She did take care of herself very delicately even if she only stayed in her room. She always wore neat shirts and skirts with matching colors and kept her long hair neat like silk. Her delicacy had never been discovered by anyone before he came. He picked up the ball and ran away. Her sight was led by his footsteps and arrived at the pitch where he was playing with his friends. She stared at them in a trance for quite a long time. He noticed the anticipation in her eyes, came running back and invited her to join him. She turned away and refused awkwardly, but her sight was still led by his footsteps and returned to the pitch and him. The crowd gradually dispersed. His friends went home. He again noticed her and ran back to her window. He asked her about her refusal, and she, for the very first time, revealed her health condition and her inability to leave the house. She felt the afternoon sun getting warmer

12:00

He had since then appeared frequently at her window. Every Spring, he would bring her a large armful of mixed weeds and flowers and teach her to weave baskets and make wreaths. He also always brought her plentiful photographs for her to explore more of the world through the blurred patterns on the little pieces of photo paper. Every Summer, he would be away for a while—he said his family took him on a trip. When he was away, he would request his friends place postcards and letters on her windowsill. She saw that one day. One of his friends, with one hand holding a letter and another covering his mouth, quickly threw the envelope onto her windowsill and then sped away. He always came back from the trip with numerous strange stories, various strange objects, and a few books in strange languages. Every Autumn, he would bring her the leaves he had picked up — the ones being stained with the color of canaries — and she would clamp them in the pages of a book. Every Winter, he would build little snowmen on her windowsill or make small, strange-looking animals out of the snow.

Before his arrival, her heart was a wasteland. The earth was filled with ugliness, was barren, colorless, and uninteresting. It was his presence that made endowed the land with endless warmth. The stream began to flow, the flowers began to bloom, and butterflies began to swiftly fly around. Her heart was covered with soft feathers, was moistened by the warm spring water of the lake and was stroked by the balmy breeze.

19:00

That Winter, her health suddenly deteriorated, and she was admitted to  hospital. For a long time, she suffered from a high fever. She felt the dry, sweltering air bumping back and forth in her skull, creating a flowing black swirl of chaos. She felt her weakness as if she was floating in the air and could be at any time blown away from the world. He came to the hospital to see her a few times, sometimes with red-rimmed eyes, sometimes with wet eyelashes. A thought kept coming into her mind. She did not want to go. She did not care about being present in the world, but she did not want to leave him.

It was a quiet night; she was listening to her own breathing as she was counting her own heartbeats. Suddenly she felt a violent shiver in her veins. She heard her breath becoming more rapid and felt the rhythmic beating of her heart. She felt as if a large, wet, black cloth were covering her face. She felt as if she had fallen to an abyss of water and could not breathe. Finally, she fell asleep. Miraculously, after that night, her health began to recover as the treatment progressed.

The next Spring, she returned home and came back to the window. He did not show up this time, instead, his friend did. She saw his friend’s face soaked with tears. Then one day, she could not recall which, she vaguely heard his friend’s cry and a few words which sounded like “leaving the world" and "never coming back". She understood.

She felt the extinguishment of the sunlight.

22:00

She did not expect herself to be the one left behind lonely in this world.

She sank into her bed and stared at the ceiling. She felt that in her heart the stream had dried up, the flowers had withered, and the wings of the butterflies had been pulverized. In her heart, only a wasteland remained, and later nothing remained. She felt that everything around her was stripped away piece by piece. The patterns on the wallpaper began to flow and the ceiling began to tremble. The bed had become a swamp that she was drowning in.

Later, she would often stand beside the window and stare at the faraway sky. She had not been taking care of that window for a long time. Cracks and mosses grew between the neat, fine veins of the wooden windowpanes and black roses drooped sporadically with their dark green leaves riddled with moths. She had not been taking care of herself for a long time. She would simply wear a large white nightgown and stand on the ground barefoot. One side of her nightgown collar often hung down from her shoulder, revealing a small piece of her back. Her hair was tangled together and piled up on her shoulders. There was no longer any light flickering in her eyes, and even the starlight reflected in her pupils was dim. Her eyes always were half-closed and her mind completely lost.

One night, when she was drowning in the swamp of her bed, she had a dream. A distant voice was reverberating in her mind.

“Why have you felt a grief so deep?" The voice asked.

“He is no longer here," she said.

"What if he is the one remaining after your death?" the voice asked.

"I think he will be as aggrieved," she said.

"He was spared such pain. You saved him by taking his place, at the cost that you are now alive and indulging  in such deep grief. This is the meaning of your grief," said the voice at last.

After that dream, she often sat by the window thinking about the distant voice.

0:00

One night, when the sky was enveloped in a veil of black gauze and the starlight was streaming down, she suddenly stood up. She removed the moss from the wood of the windowpane and sheared away the dead roses and the dead leaves. She changed into a neat shirt and skirt with matching colors. She looked at the distant sky. In her eyes, the light began to flutter. The starlight reflected in her pupils began to shine.