The Parting: A Caribbean Tale of Loss And Shadows

You don’t forget the first time death enters a house.

Not really.

During the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, when loss felt closer than ever and the world seemed suspended between fear and silence, I found myself thinking about something I had not faced in years—the mystery of death.

Not just death itself.

But what comes after.

Or what lingers.

It was during that time I turned to writing—not as ambition, not as a goal—but as an escape. A quiet place to sit with thoughts I didn’t fully understand. I began stories I could not finish. Fragments. Moments. Questions without answers.

And then… I stopped.

Life moved. Time passed.

Those unfinished stories stayed where I left them—waiting.

Only now have I returned to them.

Only now have I begun to complete what I started back then.

And this story is one of them.

I thought back to the rituals I witnessed as a child growing up in the Caribbean—the quiet, unspoken rules that followed when someone passed. The clocks being stopped. The mirrors covered. The windows opened.

Not explained.

Just… done.

As a child, I accepted them without question.

As an adult, I began to wonder—what were we really doing?

Who were those rituals for?

The living?

Or the dead?

The Parting: A Caribbean Tale of Loss and Shadows is born from that space between memory and unease. It follows a young girl, Marcia, as she experiences the death of her grandmother—not as a distant event, but as something that enters the home, settles into the walls, and refuses to leave quietly.

As grief unfolds around her, something else begins to take shape.

A presence.

Unseen, but deeply felt.

Not everything that departs… goes peacefully.

And not every tradition exists for comfort.

Some exist because, long ago, someone learned what happens when they are not followed.

This story is not just about death.

It is about the weight of what we cannot explain.

The things we feel in the dark but cannot name.

The quiet fear that perhaps… the boundary between the living and the dead is thinner than we would like to believe.

If you have ever lost someone…

If you have ever felt something you could not explain…

If you have ever wondered what truly happens after the final breath…

Or if, like me, you have ever turned to stories just to make sense of something you couldn’t face directly—

Then this story was written for you.

Content Advisory:

This story contains themes of death, mourning, burial rituals, supernatural folklore, and psychological horror that some readers may find unsettling.