What Does a Child from a House of Death Look Like?

Let me tell you what a child from a house of death looks like.

He's confident, has extreme separation anxiety, is overgrown and can regress into a clingy toddler in seconds. He has a say in every adult decision and is empathetic beyond his years. He senses shifts in moods, is adjusting, accommodating and, overall, a champ in general.

Now, I may be biased because I'm talking about my own miniature. But from the moment his father died, he simply accepted it in his two-year-old brain and moved on without too much of a hue and cry.

The only time I've seen him make a fuss was when I had to drag him from the arms of a relative and make him see his father's body one last time before I took him to the crematorium. He screamed his head off and refused to look at his father in that moment.

Somehow, his baby brain erased the fact that his father was no more.

What followed were persistent questions about where his father had vanished to.

"If Baba has gone to God, why hasn't he taken his suitcase with him?"

"Can you tell me Baba die story?"

"Will you also vanish inside the office like Baba did?"

"Shall I go up to God and punch Baba on his stomach and make him come back down?"

I really had no answers in that moment as a heartbroken widow. I didn't bother answering them, and I didn't bother staying around to listen to my parents answer all his questions either.

Mad, mad months that dragged on for a substantial amount of time — that's how I remember the early days of grief for my toddler and me.

Five years later, when I ask him whether he misses his father, he says, "Not really. But I think I'd like to have a father."

Sigh.

The guilt of failing him as a mother hits me hard from time to time. I wonder why I had to marry a man who had to drop dead just as my child needed him the most.

So that's a child of grief for you — mature, sensible and wise beyond his years.

He knows what mood I'm in simply by looking at my face. He kisses me on my cheeks and pats my head as I drown myself in work and tells all his teachers at school, "My mumma is very, very busy, all the time."

Cue the infinite sighs now.

It is what it is.

The wheels of our life will keep turning only as long as I stay busy, and it's a reality my child and I accepted a long time ago.