The Wind That Accompanied You

A farewell letter to my beloved Tita Gilda, written in memory of the evening the trees kept moving and the world changed forever.

To me, Tita Gilda was the Queen of the family. In chess, the Queen is the most powerful piece; she is the protector, the one who moves across the board to cover everyone else’s weaknesses.

Tita Gilda lived like that.

Losing her feels like a total collapse, a blunder in life we weren’t prepared for. She embodied an emotional rush of influence; as long as she was there, we couldn’t lose. I saw it in her warm interactions with my dad and the deep friendship she shared with my mom.

Even on her deathbed, I saw her trying to prolong her life, fighting as hard as we all wanted her to stay.

Tita Gilda, while we may not have mini versions of you, your legacy endures in the way you taught us to care for one another. Your love quietly held our family together, and we only recognized its importance when it was suddenly gone.

Your suffering is over now, but ours is only beginning.

Because grief is such a lonely thing, it sneaks into ordinary moments and destroys them from the inside. One day, someone says your name casually, and your chest caves in. One day, you reach for your phone, only to remember there is no number left to call. One day, the world expects you to continue living as though something sacred had not just been taken from you.

And the hardest part is this:

The world does continue.

Morning still comes.

People still eat dinner.

The sky still changes colour at sunset.

Meanwhile, somewhere inside us, a room remains untouched forever — the room where we last saw you breathing.

That night, the trees were still moving outside the hospital window as your chest stopped rising.

I keep thinking about that.

How strange it felt that the leaves still danced in the wind while the world inside that room quietly ended. The machines still hummed. The hallway lights still flickered softly. Somewhere, people were laughing in another part of the city. Cars kept driving. The night kept breathing.

And yet for us, time split open.

There was a moment when you were still here.

And then there was a moment when you weren’t.

So small.

So quiet.

Almost unbearable in how ordinary it looked.

I think that is what hurts the most about death — not always the drama of it, but the silence. The way a soul can leave a body without the earth trembling beneath it. One second, your hands still belonged to this world, and the next, they felt like something we could no longer reach, no matter how tightly we held them.

I wonder if you heard us before you left.

I wonder if somewhere beneath the silence and the medication and the distance between this world and the next, you still knew we were there beside you. Still knew how desperately we loved you. Still knew that none of us were ready.

The trees kept moving.

And somehow, that image keeps haunting me, because it felt like nature was trying to say something we were too heartbroken to understand, as if the wind itself were accompanying you out of this life. As if heaven arrived softly instead of suddenly.

Maybe death is quieter than we imagine.

Maybe souls leave the body the same way leaves loosen from branches —

not violently,

But when holding on becomes too heavy.

We will miss you.

We will carry you with us forever.

And we will never forget that laughter.

Rest in peace, Tita Gilda.