I Was Named After Misfortune

Asra, that was the name given to me by my mother before she breathed her last, cold fingers holding the cotton blanket covering my infant body with a strong grip. As if she wasn't willing to go away just yet.

"Not yet," she hoarsely whispered, her heart beginning to stutter, the machine ringing like a siren as the doctor and nurses rushed to her side; taking me away. "No, please not yet ," a solemn prayer to anyone willing to listen. " Please , I still have so many things to tell you. So much more to teach."

She didn't last the night of my birth.

Perhaps, in a different time, she might have been able to survive the night. Possibly even being able to be the mother she dreamed herself to be. In a different time, it might have been me who died on the very same day I was born as she mourns my passing in her hospital gown.

Sadly, it was not that timeline.

It wasn't very long before I was being gently lowered to my father's shaking arms, grief wracking his shoulders for the loss of his wife, his eyes turning glassy as he stared at the very creature who took his beloved other half away.

"Why is it you ?" Father whispered to himself as his eyes blazed both in anger and sadness. His grip turning cruel, fingers digging to my sensitive skin as it shortly wrangled a cry of distress from my mouth.

"Why did YOU take my wife from me?!" He questioned.

An idiotic action seeing as I, a newly born infant, could not even deign to answer the various possibilities and reasons why his wife would pass away after her labor. My father, of course, did not stop to think that I have no control of my very creation.

I did not ask to be born. They are the ones who created me and decided to keep me rather than, say, aborting my fetal self before reaching mother's 2nd trimester.

"You monster!" Father snarled, arms tensing and bracing for the urge to throw the bundle of flesh far, far away. His desolation reached new heights, making his eyes grow dark with fury.

How... troublesome .

In hindsight, the nurses probably shouldn't have placed me in the arms of a man who still hasn't processed the death of his wife.

In a retrospective point of view, father shouldn't have blamed me when I was but a mere babe who doesn't even have the strength to lift my own head.

In an act of mercy, I should probably thank the other man beside my father who swiftly took me from his arms, giving me to a nurse, and giving father a talk about not taking out his grief on the very child his wife had exchanged her life to be birthed; that father should've cherished me more for the very sacrifice of life.

Truly, I find the sentiment both sweet and sickening. Funny, how the very moment I was born, I was already living up to my namesake.

Asra, a name that means noble and giving, closely tied to martyrs and a harsh, bitter death, was delivered by a loving mother who died for my sake, her life given in exchange for mine.

Maybe mother named me wrong, because I never became the child she probably wished me to be. I never gave anything to anyone.

I, Asra, only live to take, and her life was the very first I had taken.

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Growing up without a mother isn't as difficult as what most people would have assumed. Troublesome, yes, but never difficult, because unlike other children my age, I was born an observer; a watcher.