How do you let go of someone you never had?

Everyone told him he would forget, that everything would be okay. No one told him how to be okay or what would be okay.

To feel pain and not to know what pain was, was the most agonizing thing he had ever experienced.

It was a sunny morning, and whoever was well enough to see the sun rise would argue that nothing could have made the day bitter. On this beautiful morning, his sister would be born.

Someone to play with, someone life had promised for months. Someone to look up to him.

Although expected, no one knew exactly when the baby would arrive, so the delivery had to be done at home. Everything seemed normal right up until the baby’s first cry. What is normally a sign of joy and relief soon became a painful memory, to some more than others. It was a baby girl. Baby Lucy.

The house, which had been a frenzy of activity, came to a standstill. Her sole cry and her only breath were her last. As if that was all she deserved. Early neonatal death, they call it. Where the baby dies within the first 24 hours of birth. There is so much writing and stories of how this affects the mothers of these children that sometimes the tales overshadow the pain felt by others. This story, in particular, is about a young boy. Lucy’s elder brother.

He had only been four years old when this happened, and although some may argue that he was still too young to understand, he seemed to have been affected most of all.

Because while everyone moved on with their lives, he was still waiting, hoping, wishing that hers was not over.

Everyone stopped him from going to see his sister, in the name of shielding him. Given the grief and the physical pain that the mother was in, she asked the family and friends in attendance to give her child a quick burial.

At that age, the boy did not know how to grieve, and neither was he allowed enough time to learn.

As is customary in some cultures, the dead are buried on the family land. However, this family had no land to their name. The child was therefore buried in an ad hoc cemetery. Technology was not rampant, and there were no phones. Cameras on the other hand, were reserved for happy occasions such as family photos. For this reason, there are no photographs of Lucy and no lasting memory of what she looked like.

Life can be so cruel that even a goodbye becomes impossible.

All the boy has now is the name of his sister and a fading memory of her resting smile. Everyone in the family soon moved on. Nobody went to visit her. Nobody took him to her. Since the baby had never been a tight part of the daily routine, everyone seemed to have forgotten her. The boy now feels as though he is the only member of the family who still remembers his sister.

However, holding on to this memory has been like carrying a ghost because the only memory he has is of losing her and nothing more.

The graveyard, which was only a temporary fix, has been abandoned, covered in weeds and other plants that try to reignite life in the place. By the time the boy is old enough to search for answers, he has no idea where the graveyard is, and neither does his mother. Everyone else seems to have a vague memory neither here nor there.

It is as if Lucy was never there. A myth gone with the wind.

The only bond that ever existed between them was anticipatory and imaginary, a sibling bond formed before birth, through whispered hopes and hands pressed to a mother’s belly. He is playing back conversations that never were, picturing her smile. How tall would she be? Would they have those petty sibling fights?

He had a whole canvas ready, but life delivered no paint nor subject.

Maybe, someday, it will hurt less. Because no matter how hard he tries to let go of what never was, he is left holding what could have been.

He is learning that maybe he doesn’t need to let go, that maybe he needs to learn to live with her even if she is not alive. Some days he forgets, other days it all comes back to him. Maybe one day he will see her again, but that’s all he has now. Just maybes.