The rise behind the shadows

How I wish time can be reversed back to the beginning of the beginning, opening the windows if not doors of amendments. My heart continues to dance to the beat of regrets and anguish anytime I remember my past,and the disgusting overwhelming questions of “What”, “Why”, “How”that wants to claim my life. I am Faustina by name I am 29 years old of age. My parent gave birth to two children, I am the only daughter of my parent and also the last child. Sadly, my parents are late already. My Mother was a banker before a fatal motor accident claimed her life on her way back from work. I was 23 years old when my mother died. My mother has been the only one taking care of me and my brother ever since our dad died. My Father died when I was 12 years of age. My father was a devoted Catholic member and also a catechist in his parish. He is a well known faithful poor man whose opinion is regarded paralyzed in the society most especially in his parish. They hated him and conspired with one another to bring him down. Their conspiracy went successful as they were able to contact death to come pick my dad at his youthful age. My dad died from a disheartening heart attack which made my mum the best hopeless woman in the whole wide world. That day I could not forgive my dad for dying, I blamed him for giving up and till now I can’t still forgive him for dying. I have a whole lot of questions for him when we meet in heaven. For many years after my mother died, I lived in a shadow—the shadow of loss, the shadow of regret, the shadow of what could have been. I became a wandering soul in the shell of a 23-year-old woman, struggling to find light in a world that had repeatedly proven it could snatch everything I loved away in a moment. Grief became a silent language I spoke fluently. I wore it like a second skin, invisible to most, but suffocating me from within. I smiled when I had to. I laughed when expected. But in truth, I was drowning in questions—Why them? Why me? Why so soon? My brother, older than I by eight years, tried to be my anchor. But he was grieving too, in his own quiet, hardened way. We never truly spoke about the pain. We survived beside each other, but not with each other. And so I wandered—emotionally, spiritually, and eventually, physically. I left home, carrying only a few clothes and a heart bursting with unspoken sorrow. There were nights I slept on a friend's couch, too ashamed to admit I had nowhere else to go. There were mornings I skipped meals because I couldn’t afford to eat. But worst of all were the moments of silence—those long hours when the world quieted and my mind became a battlefield. But shadows, I’ve learned, don’t exist without light. And even though I didn't see it then, something deep within me—something divine, perhaps something inherited from my mother’s unbreakable strength or my father’s stubborn faith—kept whispering, “Rise.” That whisper grew louder when I stumbled across an old diary my mother had kept—one she hid beneath her favorite clothes in a box I hadn’t dared open in years. Her words were full of dreams, plans, and deep faith in God’s timing—even though life had cheated her. One passage struck me: "If life ever breaks you, daughter, let it be only so that light can find a way through your cracks." That night, I cried not just for her, but for myself. I cried for the little girl who lost her dad. For the young woman who watched her world collapse twice. For the girl who blamed the dead for dying. Time has a way of rewriting itself in the quiet corners of memory. Some days, I remember everything in full color—my father’s voice rising in song during evening rosary, my mother humming in the kitchen as the scent of fried plantain filled our modest home. Other days, the past comes to me only in fragments, as if grief has smudged the edges of every beautiful thing that once was. But one thing remains unchanging: the day the light went out of my world. I was just twelve years old when I watched my father collapse on the tiled floor of our small living room. His eyes widened—more in surprise than in pain—as he clutched his chest and gasped for breath. I can still hear the haunting echo of my mother’s scream, so raw and full of disbelief, as she rushed to his side. I stood there frozen, too young to understand death, but old enough to recognize that something sacred had just left the world. They said it was a heart attack. Quick. Unforgiving. Silent in its arrival but loud in its aftermath. My father, a devoted catechist, was a man who lived in such quiet humility that it seemed even God forgot how valuable he was. He gave his life to service—teaching children the catechism, organizing the parish’s calendar, helping widows with their groceries, comforting the sick. And yet, despite his devotion, he was never celebrated. In fact, he was mocked. They whispered about him in church corridors, calling him "the poor preacher" behind his back. Some ridiculed him for his strict moral stance—how he refused to accept bribes, how he questioned the priest's misuse of parish funds, how he spoke truth even when it cost him friendships. He became a threat, not because of power, but because of truth. And in a world where truth makes people uncomfortable, they do everything to silence it. I believe they killed him—not with weapons or poison, but with words, with scorn, with rejection. I was too young then to name the betrayal, but old enough to feel its sting. My father died surrounded not by friends, but by enemies. After he died, my mother stopped singing. Her joy was buried alongside his body in that dusty cemetery outside town. I watched her turn from a warm, attentive woman into a ghost who floated from room to room, eyes hollow, voice muted. Still, she remained strong for us—me and my brother, Damian. She wore her grief like a second skin but never allowed it to unravel in front of us. My mother went back to work just two weeks after the funeral. She had no choice. Bills didn’t pause for mourning. She was a banker—disciplined, driven, fiercely intelligent. I used to think she was the strongest woman alive, but now I know she simply had no other option. Strength is often born where there's no room for weakness. Then, one rainy Tuesday evening, the world broke again. I was 23. I had just finished university, still unsure of what to do with my life. That night, I waited for my mother to come home as usual. She always called if she’d be late. But that night, no call came. I remember pacing by the window, trying her phone every five minutes, feeling a tightness in my chest I couldn’t explain. It was around 9:47 PM when the knock came. I opened the door to a police officer and a man in a reflective vest. They didn’t have to say a word. My knees gave way before the words could even land. “Ma’am, your mother was involved in a fatal accident...” The rest of their words faded behind the loud, deafening noise in my ears. I felt my heart tearing—not breaking, tearing—like someone had reached into my chest and was pulling it apart piece by piece. They told me her car had been hit by a reckless truck driver on Third Mainland Bridge. She died instantly. They said she didn’t feel pain. But I did. I felt it in every bone, in every breath. In one moment, I became an orphan. In one moment, I was no longer anyone’s daughter. I still remember sitting in her room the night after her burial. The scent of her perfume still clung to her pillow. I lay there, clutching it like a child, tears soaking into the fabric. I whispered apologies I never said when she was alive. Apologies for every raised voice, every rolled eye, every selfish mistake. I felt unworthy to have survived her. She had fought for me, bled for me, and now I had no way to thank her. I was angry—at life, at the unfairness of it all. But mostly, I was angry at my father. I hated him for dying. For leaving her alone. For not fighting harder to stay. I needed him, and he left me with questions that still sit like sharp stones in my chest. I still can’t forgive him. Not yet. I want to ask him: Why did you let them destroy you? Why didn’t you protect her more? Why did you make me grow up so fast? Maybe one day, in heaven, I’ll get to ask. Maybe one day, he’ll answer. From the outside, I looked okay. People assumed I was coping. But grief doesn’t show itself in obvious ways. It lives in forgotten cups of tea, in eyes that blink too long, in silence that stretches just a second too far. After my mother’s death, I stopped attending church. I stopped praying. I stopped believing that God even saw me. Because if He did, why would He allow this? Why would He let a girl bury both her parents before turning 25? I moved out of our house. I couldn’t bear to walk those halls anymore, to see the shadows of the life we once had. I drifted—like seaweed in a storm, pulled in every direction, belonging to none. But even in darkness, something waited. Not a voice. Not a miracle. But a seed. The seed of something not yet grown. Something buried under all the sorrow. Something that refused to die, even when I wanted to. I didn’t know it then, but that seed would become the very thing that saved me. The thing that made me rise