Pointless

Part III

"...Happy birthday to you." Everyone in the room sang as they finished they song. They all sat at little tables in the richly-decorated room. It was her aunts fiftieth birthday. It had been 163 days since the funeral, Iris had noted to herself. Iris was seated at a table. As the others guests went to dance, Iris found herself alone with her grandmother.
"Iris, are you not going to dance?"
Iris didn't respond, she only shook her head.
"What's troubling you?"
"Nothing." Iris looked down at her folded hands.
Her grandmother tried to smile at her, but it didn't quite work. "I know that something is wrong" Iris frowned, but her grandmother continued to explain "Your mother told me that you've been distressed lately, that you've not been eating nor sleeping."
Silence. Iris resented answering that question, she preferred to stay in her comfortable shell and never come out. She knew that people wouldn't understand. They would laugh at her and think she was silly.
"I thought we had promised each other to never keep secrets when you were five." She looked Iris in the eyes, not menacing, but with a soft, yet taunting gaze. "It will be easier if you tell someone, I promise you."
Iris stayed silent for a moment before she answered "I'm just afraid," she said in a voice so quiet it was almost a whisper, "that something will happen to someone else. I'm terrified that someone else is going to die."
Her grandmother didn't respond at first, she only nodded.
"How can you not be sad over grandfather's funeral?" Iris asked.
"Oh I am, I am sad every single day, but I owe it to him to live. Anyone could die any day, but that is not a reason for us to live in fear. We have to enjoy the time we have, if we don't, life is pointless.
"But it will hurt more when it ends." Iris said this in a determined and insisting tone.
"It will always hurt, but it will hurt even more if you regret not using the time you could have had. We can only honour the dead by living, not by living in the past, but living right now, in the moment."
First, there was a silence that said more than enough. Then, for the first time in forever, Iris smiled.
The point of living is to make sure you don't regret.