“Life is not fair.”
It was a thought she felt crossed her mind more often than anyone else in the world.
That familiar sting had followed her since childhood — it always came back when things went against her wishes. Yet, in the face of every hardship, her mother, a single parent, had remained the epitome of positivity. She had this quiet, stubborn grace that turned every setback into a lesson.
That was twenty-four years ago. Back then, she was just a little girl of ten — too young to truly grasp what fairness meant.
“I am born out of wedlock and have never seen my father,” she would complain.
As a teenager, she found little comfort in her mother’s soft assurance that she was a love child — born of deep affection between two people who could not be together. It was too much philosophy for a young mind to hold — the idea that two people could love deeply, and yet be bound by constraints that love alone could not conquer.
Her mother used to say, “Sometimes love teaches us to let go — not because it is weak, but because it is wise.”
This morning, that same phrase came back to her — along with that old familiar thought: Life’s not fair.
She could feel it even before she opened her eyes — he was gone.
Soon, this house, this room, the furniture, even the garden they had built together, would lose their meaning. The hibiscus, the rose, the marigold — all would fade into dullness, drained of color but memory.
They both knew this relationship lived on borrowed time, a season stolen from reality. They had chosen to take what they could — a handful of beautiful, impossible moments — instead of a lifetime of compromise.
And now that it was over, she felt something strange.
Not just loss — but recognition.
Maybe it was destiny.
Maybe she was simply re-living a chapter from her mother’s life.
Or perhaps, somewhere deep in her being, it had always been coded into her genes.
