The scent of old lavender still clung to her shawls. Even when her bones had grown too frail to walk unaided, Mother Superior would insist on wearing her worn blue habit, always pinned just so, with her silver crucifix glinting like a quiet rebellion against time.
Her illness began as a whisper—slight trembles, hushed coughs, long pauses between thoughts. But the whisper soon became a scream inside her body, relentless and cruel. I was seventeen when the sickness made itself known, and no prayer felt loud enough to silence it.
"Maa," I called her. Not because she asked me to, but because that's who she had become. Not just Mother Superior to the congregation, but mother to me.
Some nights I would sit by her side, holding her hand wrapped in mine like trying to cradle water—always slipping, always fragile. She would smile through the pain, tell me I was born strong, tell me not to cry. But my tears had already written stories into my cheeks.
She said the name Salma meant peaceful. I didn't believe her at first. How could someone so full of command and clarity name their daughter such a quiet word? But she would hold my chin and say, "Peace doesn't mean silence, Salma. It means strength without violence. That is who you are."
Still, I preferred to be called Monstel—my second name. It sounded more like stone, like something firm and untouched by grief. But she insisted the first name mattered more. "The name you were born with," she whispered one morning, "defines your first prayer."
Her breath began to shorten days before it happened. The chapel fell into a mourning hush even before she passed. The Fathers walked slower. The Sisters whispered their rosaries like raindrops on glass.
That day, I had gone to school. I didn't want to leave her, but she made me go. "You must go," she said with those stern eyes of hers. "One day, you'll be the one wearing this cross." I didn't know it would be her last command.
They said her eyes kept fluttering, searching, waiting. Even as the nuns surrounded her, whispering blessings, she was looking at the door.
When I turned the corner of the convent, something in my chest collapsed. I don't know how, but I knew. I ran, dropped my books, barefoot and breathless, and from the garden path I cried, "It's Salma!"
She forced her eyes open.
The Sisters would later say they'd never seen someone fight so hard to see a face.
When I reached her bedside, she reached out a hand that barely moved, her fingers quivering like the last flame of a candle. Her voice cracked, dry and thin as silk in a storm.
"How I wished to have seen… that face of yours… Salma Monstel."
And then… she was gone.
The moment she left, it felt like the wind itself paused in sorrow. I buried my face in her chest, still warm, still holding traces of her scent. The world became unbearably quiet.
The chapel bells rang the next morning. The same bells that once tolled for her masses now cried out her departure.
She had made me promise I'd continue, and so, at eighteen, I took the vows. They called me Mother Superior Mostel II. I smiled, politely. But the truth was, I would never be her.
They could call me what they liked. I still preferred Mostel. It was easier than saying Salma and feeling everything she used to mean to me.
Grief is a room with no corners, no walls—just echoes. And every night since she left, I wrote to her in these pages, trying to make sense of a world without her voice.
But today… today I cannot write another word.
Because the ink feels heavier without her name in it. Because the paper feels colder without her breath nearby. Because every sentence I write aches for her eyes to read it.
Because of her death, I, Salma Monstel, have nothing more to write.
Not because there are no more stories left— but because the one person I longed to share them with, now rests in silence.
And somehow, without her, even words feel empty.