My last letter to you

Cyclops passed on early yesterday morning. She is at peace now.

It feels like it’s finally time to let go.

It has been 13 years. I have been waiting for you to appear at the doorstep to tell you that I love you and how much I have missed you.

I suppose I will always wait for you but I will always remember you now like how I remember her, when we were young and carefree, having stolen moments of fun while tiptoeing around his rage.

Remember how Cyclops used to parkour all around the house, lithely jump onto the tallest cabinet, and chase the ball like a champion? The way she would sit with us for hours on end.

Remember when we played Indiana Jones in the living room and bedroom? Oh and all the nonsense “mathematics” I taught you in on our tiny whiteboard?

I remember how she used to squat on her ‘hunting’ mode when she spot pigeons in the carpark without actually catching them and make us play hide and seek with her from under one car to the next. How most of our neighbours know her and press the lift for her to the 7th floor. Cyclops, cyclops, I will miss those sweet eyes of hers.

But I accept now if you choose to stay away to heal from those painful years growing up in that house; nobody really understands how it can mess us up inside when the person who is supposed to protect us is the same one we had to be most afraid of.

I have to let go now of the resentment that our whole family has broken apart. I need to let go of my guilt for leaving you behind when you did not want to come along with us. What I mistook for your teenage angst and apathy was you really struggling under heavy emotional and mental burden.

If I knew then, what I knew now, that that would be the last time we would be living under the same roof, I would have tried harder and waited longer, until you were ready to leave.

The truth was, I was terrified as well, too desperate to leave. Wondering, always wondering what would happen one day, if he decides to take things too far. Blood on the floor? What if it was something worse? Something much worse?

I am sorry for being such an insufferable know-it-all when I tried to be your big sister. And I am really sorry to have left you behind. The guilt was so heavy that I sometimes blame her for not taking action sooner but I cannot go on like this. I need to give her the best I can, in her golden years left.

I pray to Allah swt that you will one day find it in your heart to forgive me.

Trying to think from your point of view, perhaps it made much more sense to you to leave all the pain behind after national service to chart your own path in life forward.

What ever you decide, to meet again or to stay away, I just hope that you have found peace and solace with your new family. May Allah swt Grant you all the goodness and barakah in this world and the Hereafter. And may He swt Gather us all together with Rasullullah saw and the souls of the truthful and the righteous in Jannatul Firdhaus, insyaa Allah, Amiin, ya Rabbal ‘aalamiin.