Death is inevitable. My mother once told me, “Life is like riding a public bus. You don’t get down unless you’ve reached your stop.” I always thought this was true. She always has her own way with words. Less scary. More understandable. Maybe that’s why whenever I am in trouble or pain, I think of her calm words. Maybe that’s why when I was covered in bricks and beams, she was the first person I thought of. Maybe that’s why I held on and didn’t give up against the rage of nature.
It all started out with a normal aftershock-y Tuesday. We’d be hit with few shakes but we had learned to take it coolly. It was all a part of our daily life after the 7.9 RC earthquake that devastated Nepal. We had learned to live again. But when another 7+ hit us on 12th May, a garage wall fell on me. With all its bricks and cement and windows and door, it covered me from head to toe. For a few panicking seconds I thought I would die. I was ready to let go of the pain. But something inside me made me get up(on my own!). I could see blood, which automatically made me think of my mother. I cried for her and pleaded people to take me to her before taking me to a hospital. And those good people did the same. Seeing my mother made me weak. Seeing me weak made her cry. The circle of the mother-daughter relationship is weird. I guess this is how it works.
So, I lived. I survived. True, I’m weak and have a torn muscle and cuts and wounds and bruises like I’ve been punched by Manny the Pacman, but here I am. Here I am, telling you about how I almost died. Had I died, I would have missed out on a whole lot of things. Things that mean a lot to me. I would have missed Liverpool being a total ass on Gerrard’s last home game. I would’ve missed the family laughing over each other’s snoring styles. I would’ve missed the smell of rain on the earth. I would’ve missed all the group messages on Viber that keep me going. I would’ve missed going around the town searching for cotton candy. I would’ve also missed typing with one hand because the other one is hanging by a sling. I would’ve missed more that I could think of, but above all, I would’ve missed watching my mother sleep, because ever since the 25th, I’ve never slept without watching her sleep. It was my safe haven.
All in all, I guess once in a while, we need to be hit by a wall to realize that life is more than just breathing in and out, that life is more about living and less about leaving. Life has its own complications but it isn’t as bad as you think it is. Life is about enjoying the bus ride until you reach your stop. So, buckle up and enjoy it.