[To the reflections that float above and underneath; calmly]

It’s the mist around my eyes, the head is good. Being 87 is no child’s play and the wrinkles are no merit of honour. You must see my ears; they make great peep-holes.

I got Aidan when I was 28. The doctor talked about a baby but I was dead sure of it being a boy- maternal intuition perhaps. He was our happiness then and the tiny hands inside clutched to our future, nearly securing El Dorado to my world. Dr Spock’s parenting tips were blindly followed and the cutest clothes engulfed rooms which lay covered in safe toys, soft toys and toys. The satisfaction was plain euphoria.

I remember everyone being happy. My late father’s eyes almost always welled up for his dear daughter. He wanted the baby to be Alex- boy or girl. Alex was some great guy who died in the war. I agreed only because papa was dying though I secretly stuck to ‘Aidan’. I had thought of it as a teen, a sacred remnant to a beautiful past.

The Aidan I never knew was dying from Cancer. Rene wanted to visit him and I accompanied; dreading the atmosphere, probably sunk in futile hope and unhappy happiness.

Aidan feared death. I’d have hated him if he didn’t and laughed around faking fake courage. He liked to paint I think and he painted. For us teens then, some things just used to be a splendid runaway.

He wasn’t great at it unless you call any mélange abstract art. He didn’t want us to see the paintings, but the proud mother was more than helpful. He was embarrassed, modest with eulogies and blushing. He was another one among us, a teenager and we liked him for that.

The sharp strokes did nothing to give away the decrepit self. They looked deliberate, an attempt to hurt than gently resemble life. A lot of blue smothered his paintings: rivers, seas and skies. His streams would run deep, cutting into infinitesimal lines, crossing and uncrossing each other- so hideously beautiful.

Aidan wasn’t cheerful about it but the understanding made it easier for him to live. He died the following spring with the flowers.

We weren’t sad much, I didn’t know him. But the proud mother horrified me infrequently me and the cruelties of destiny, oh, I never comprehended them. But he blue stayed and came more often. It flowed against every pebble and moss, garnered more to it, unyielding to succumb and fighting to grow and make its way through.

At the hospital, Aidan, tagged ‘Baby Misha’ fought and died of an infection. He was two days old.

We drowned in our holes and it only flooded us. We didn’t struggle, it was a fall and the empty air didn’t fill anyone’s hands.

We buried the death together but that which is covered always thrives; shattering the life of an eighty-seven year old into a million pieces but the crystals elude reflection, amused probably.