“Mum,” I touched my mother’s shoulder. She shrugged but didn’t wake. “MOTHER.” I shook her more aggressively. She woke up and looked at me. In the darkness, I saw her eyes widen.

“Walter,” she said in a whisper, and I saw that she was scared.

“Mum, what happened?” I knelt beside the bed.

“Walter…” she started to say, but her words broke off.

“What is it, Mum?”

“Walter, Sunny is gone,” she said under her breath, but it seemed to me like she was screaming. Her words pierced my brain like a bullet. Sunny is gone? No, I refused to believe it.

I wondered when this nightmare would finally be over. I thought I would wake up, and everything would be fine again. Those early days passed in a blur. I barely remember his funeral. I remember there were many people, and it was a beautiful sunny morning. It was as if there had not been that terrible injustice. I remember his face. Quiet, peaceful, almost childlike. 15 years old. Only 15! He had such a short life, but so many plans.

I woke up from that blur in April. I remember I was sat drawing on a bench in the orchard and suddenly the realisation hit me. He was really gone. At that moment, I felt desperate. The despair was so deep and intense, that it was as if I hit the bottom of a deep, deep pit with no way of getting out. Darkness surrounded me, and I was enveloped in it. I felt my heart trying to fight back from the searing pain and I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t. I wanted to hide in a secluded corner and disappear, as if I had never existed. What was my place in the world now? Who needed me? A feeling of helplessness engulfed me. I couldn’t change anything, fix it, or turn back the clock. My world faded without him. I would never see him again. I would never hear his voice or his laughter. We would never again walk together after school, and he would never tell me about his grand plans again. I wanted to howl and climb the walls. I stopped eating and sleeping. If I fell asleep, I dreamed the same dream about the garden covered with white snow and Sunny on his knees with his back to me. I came up to him, but he was cold and still. I woke up screaming.

One night I was drawing in my room by the lamp light. I was trying to draw my beautiful Amazon in the heat of a battle with a terrifying monster, but nothing would come. I wasted dozens of sheets of paper and tore the last one up. I got furious. The door opened, and my mother entered the room. I pretended I hadn’t seen her, took a new sheet of paper and scribbled on it. Mother sat on the edge of the bed. She was looking at me without saying a word. I scribbled some more, and it became an outline of a face.

“Walter,” mother said quietly.

I didn’t respond and kept on sketching until I’d drawn a stiff upper lip and nose.

“I know it’s hard,” she said. Well, yes it was. But in our family, we didn’t communicate with each other. We all lived our own lives, and I was perfectly fine with that. Why break the tradition? I carefully drew one eye, then the other. My mother was still talking, trying to encourage me to “open my soul”, telling me she “understands me and wants to help me”, and that she is ready to listen to my problems. No way!

I added the eyelashes, then after some thought I lengthened them. They were never interested in my problems before, and now all of a sudden, they’ve become important.

“I know a very good doctor.”

Stop. Doctor? I was going to finish off the curls, but at the mention of a doctor my pencil hovered in the air, and I paused to listen.

“Albert is a very good doctor. He’s worked with adolescents for almost 20 years. He’s a psychologist and the kids love him.”