Short Story: I never grow. Like a summer cloud my eyes were dry for three entire years, for I believed dad lied to me. Tossing in bed back and forth, trying hard to catch one of the pale blue small stars hanging on the edge of my tiny window, smiling furtively to the banana-shaped moon, I, all of a sudden, cried as loud as my lungs can help it. Mom was gone forever and dad wasn't lying. I kept denying that in every morning of the past three years. Mom was gone. Forever. Gone. I didn't understand what death exactly meant, for my grandma used always to mention my uncle, her first bear, who got shot in a clash holding a stone when he was fifteen. Whenever she mentions him, I stare at her twinkling eyes. For long time, I felt life is all about those eyes; I fell in love with them dramatically. And I envied my uncle, Hassan, though left us fifty years ago, his memory has never left us, nor it faded a bit. Death seemed a gentle man that takes people's bodies somewhere away, but he just can't erase their traces from their loved ones hearts; I myself desired such a noble end. But Death seemed gentle until it took my own Mom. It was gentle until Mom and bed stories were gone. Forever. They were three years, yet my mom's loss is still fresh and striking as if a dagger was diving in my chest, eviscerating my entrails mercilessly, taking another precious part of me every day which made my misery worse. Mom's memory haunted me instead of backing off to invite new lights in, and I made it happen. Sometimes I want to let go. I imagine if I cried when dad told us for the first time, I would have been able to take another step. If I just poured all my feelings the way my siblings did, I might have been able to put all that aside, start new, and be at peace with the world. But I didn't. I watched my siblings cry. I looked at dad, devastated. He was shrinking. I shrank since. Never grow.