Absurd

When I was a toddler, we used to call our cousins brothers and sisters because we were too absurd to ever learn the difference and furthermore ignored whoever tried to teach us. Even after our families separated, those titles had stuck around, for it was our parents who were busy being absurd, not who we called siblings.

So when the evening before my first college finals I got to know the cousin I consider my twin was in the hospital, not really fighting for his life for even living through the night would be a miracle, for the first time in my life I called my parents absurd out loud for keeping the news of his deterioration from me for more than a year.

They are too obtuse to ever understand the anger and helplessness that coursed through me when I was by his hospital bed while he looked at me without recognition, for snatching away the year I should have spent with him, the year during which his body had slowly alienated his own mind from him.

His parents were absurd to stop contacting me when he decided to repeat a year while I got enrolled in college as though his decision was a disgrace, and he was absurd for always lying to me during the past year whenever we had conversed, but while my parents were absurd for not realising how their hatred was the reason they lost their humanity, I was the most absurd to have never raised questions when the calls had stopped, to have ever accepted the absurd reason that he was just “studying a lot”, and to have ever entertained the absurd notion that elders are always right.

For my obtuseness, I lost my cousin, my brother, and my first best friend with only eight ‘gracious’ hours for awareness, acknowledgement and grievance before the end rolled in.