There have always been whispers in my family. Murmured in hushed tones at family functions. Nothing confirmed, just something that is considered truth by a select few. I never cared to listen.
When the whispers would start my cousins would leave the room. Their mom always tried to change the subject.
It was constant…
When he was living with them...
That’s why she did it...
When my cousin killed herself my aunt was devastated. The amount of shock and agony that rippled through her caused a lasting effect. There seemed to be a heaviness weighing on her. A sense of what-ifs that would never be answered.
What if I had been home…
What if I had seen the signs…
What if I had believed her…
My aunt took down all of her pictures and her other daughter didn’t come home from college for the weekends anymore.
Then just as family gatherings were gaining back some normalcy, my grandfather grew ill. It was determined he wasn’t going to make it.
My aunt was thrown through a different kind of grief. He had been living with her for a while and she hadn’t noticed him growing sicker and sicker.
Of course, after her daughter, she didn’t notice much.
She felt so guilty that she hadn’t noticed that she put it upon herself to become his main caretaker. She took care of him in a hospital bed in her home and we all tried to help her as much as we could.
I took over feeding him for a couple of days to give her a break.
Confusion had set in by then and sometimes he would frantically whisper throughout the day, seemingly to no one. I only caught snippets of what he would say.
I loved her…
I never meant for that to happen ...
Please forgive me…
My aunt was too stressed so I also took over his medication after that.
He passed quicker than they had thought.
The family got together once again and mourned him at her home.
We talked about the presence he had. How even though he didn’t say or do much near the end, the house still felt different without him.
Everyone seemed to be tired of the sadness that seemed to eclipse our family, so my aunt tried to make it less of a mourning and more of a celebration.
She had hung up the pictures of her daughter again and her other daughter finally came home. The weight seemed to be lifting and she made sure everyone’s plates and cups were filled for the entire day.
But then the whispers started again.
Cardiac arrest they said...
Came out of nowhere…
Maybe she did believe it happened after all…
My cousin didn’t leave the room when these were said, and my aunt never seemed to worry about the underlying currents of suspicion.
Of course, there have always been whispers in my family but I didn’t care.
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