Death if Easy - By Dr Vanessa Ikin

Written By: Dr Vanessa Ikin

Category: Short Story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the poignant short story "Death if Easy," Dr Vanessa Ikin delves into the complexities of life, death, and the emotional landscape that bridges these profound experiences. As part of the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, this narrative captures the raw and tender moments surrounding the arrival of a newborn amidst the shadow of a father's passing. Dr Ikin's work offers a heartfelt reflection on the simultaneous joy and sorrow that define human existence.

About the Work

"Death if Easy" is a moving exploration of the themes of grief and resilience. Dr Vanessa Ikin skillfully captures the juxtaposition of new life and loss, using vivid imagery and emotional depth to illustrate the internal struggle of a daughter and mother. The narrative's reflective tone and introspective style invite readers to ponder the invisible burdens of strength and the societal expectations placed upon women to endure in silence.

Death if Easy

Original Submission by Dr Vanessa Ikin

Death Is Easy

Dr Vanessa Ikin

My father died two weeks before my son was born.

Within a fortnight, I had met the beginning and end of life: one breath entering the world while another left it. I remember holding my perfect baby in my arms, overwhelmed with gratitude, while my tears fell uncontrollably down my cheeks. I had brought a child into the world at the very moment I wanted to crawl back into the safety of being one.

My father was everything to me. He understood me without explanation, trusted my instincts even when I doubted myself, and supported my every decision. He never once tried to change who I was. He saw the untamed parts of me not as flaws but as fire.

I wanted him back with an ache that made no sense to my adult mind. I wanted the smell of my parents’ sheets, the warmth of their bed, the sound of my father breathing next to me. I wanted to return to that small, sacred space where love was simple and unconditional. The absurdity was not lost on me. Here I was, a mother with a newborn son and a little daughter, desperate to be somebody’s little girl again.

There is something particularly cruel about giving birth when you are grieving. The world sees the baby. Everyone understands the beginning. But the ending is still happening inside you, quietly, relentlessly, without the courtesy of making room for anything else.

My body had been cut open and stitched back together, layer by layer. Every movement pulled at something tender and unfinished inside me. Standing up required calculation. Sitting down required strategy. Pain lived constantly just below the surface, not dramatic enough to alarm anyone, but persistent enough to drain me completely.

And still, I stood.

I brought my son home to a house that did not pause. There was a toddler who still needed bathing, feeding and reassurance. There were meals to prepare and routines to maintain. I remember standing at the kitchen sink, gripping the counter to steady myself as my body protested quietly. I remember lowering myself to the floor to bathe my daughter, then pausing, heart racing, trying to work out how I would stand up again without tearing something inside me. I remember feeding the baby while suppressing the urge to lie down, because lying down felt like surrender.

No one told me I had to do this.

And yet, not doing it felt unthinkable.

At night, when the house was finally still, I would rock my son beneath the soft hum of his nightlight. There was an empty chair across the room, the one where my father used to sit when he visited. Sometimes I would glance towards it and half expect to find him there, smiling faintly, telling me I was doing okay. But he wasn’t there. And every time I looked, it broke me a little more. It felt like I had died, but someone had forgotten to bury me.

I remembered holding my father’s hand as it turned cold. Now, I held my newborn son in my arms, feeling the warmth of a life that had only just begun. My body was still recovering from childbirth, expected to nourish, nurture and comfort, while every part of me was grieving.

I had spent my life believing I was strong. I knew how to be a mother. I knew how to care for my children, how to put their needs before my own, how to keep going even when I had nothing left to give.

But who was supposed to take care of me? I had just brought a child into the world, and all I wanted was to be a child again. To crawl into my father’s arms, bury my face in his chest and hear him tell me that everything would be okay.

I knew how to be a mother. I just didn't know how to be a daughter without my father.

In the weeks that followed, I was no longer living; I was merely functioning. Food lost its taste. Sleep became a stranger. Every breath felt like a decision. I carried pain like a second skin and moved through the children's needs on autopilot while something inside me quietly withered.

My doctor told me I was severely anaemic and that my body was shutting down from exhaustion. “You need rest,” she said, gently but firmly. I nodded, but all I could think was, I can’t rest. Mothers don’t rest. Grief doesn’t rest.

My mother used to tell me stories of her own mother, bent over doing the laundry, singing to drown out exhaustion. “We come from strong women,” she’d whisper. “We survive.” There was love in those words. There was also a lesson I had absorbed so completely that I no longer recognised it as a lesson.

Years later, I began to understand the peculiar psychology of that response. There is an underlying blueprint many women grow up with, often without ever realising it has been installed. The quiet instruction that suffering must be carried graciously. That pain, if unavoidable, should at least be managed competently. That showing the world your weakness is not brave but burdensome.

This blueprint does not tell women not to feel pain. It tells them not to display it. It rewards composure, praises endurance and frames silence as strength. Over time, the expectation becomes internalised. By adulthood, many women are no longer asking whether they should carry the weight. They are simply doing it, instinctively, automatically, often at great personal cost.

I had learnt long before that a good woman copes. A strong woman manages. A capable woman does not fall apart.

So I managed. I fed the baby. I tended to my daughter. I answered the ordinary demands of an ordinary day, even though there was nothing ordinary about the days I was living through. People could see me standing. They could not see what standing cost.

That is the trouble with being described as strong. After a while, everyone begins to believe you are. Worse, you begin to believe that you have no right to be anything else.

I have often thought about the phrase “you’ve got this.” Well-meaning words, perhaps, but words that can land like expectation when your chest is tight and your sense of self is thin. They skip over grief and land straight on competence. They assume capacity where there may be only survival.

There is a profound difference between coping and capacity. Coping is what we do to survive. It is adaptive, necessary and often invisible. It is getting through the day without falling apart publicly. Coping keeps the wheels turning, but it does not mean you are whole. It means you are enduring.

I was enduring. I was also disappearing behind how well I appeared to be managing.

Grief, I learned, isn’t linear. It doesn’t politely knock before it enters. It bursts through doors, uninvited, demanding your full attention. It does not care about a healing incision, an empty fridge or a child who needs to be collected. It does not care that you have already spent the morning being useful. It will find you anyway, sometimes in the smallest possible space between putting the baby down and reaching for the next thing.

When I say death is easy, I do not mean losing someone is easy. I certainly do not mean the act of dying is. I mean that death has a terrible certainty. It happens. There is a before and an after. We know the moment everything changed, even if we will spend years trying to understand it.

Living with the absence is different.

There is no date on which you officially stop reaching for the phone. No morning on which you are guaranteed to wake up without wanting to tell that person something. No neat point at which you become old enough not to need your father. The loss does not stay politely inside the days reserved for mourning. It follows you into the kitchen, sits beside the cot and waits in an empty chair.

For years, I walked through life believing that if I kept moving, I must be healing. Only later did I understand that what I was practising was not always resilience. Sometimes it was self-abandonment. Standing when my body needed to lie down was not necessarily strength. At times, it was conditioning. I had confused the ability to continue with the ability to recover.

For a long time, I mistook coping for strength. I was praised for it. Rewarded for it. Women often are. We are admired for how much we can carry, how little we complain, how efficiently we manage pain. But carrying is not the same as choosing. And endurance is not the same as agency.

I wonder how many of us are applauded for standing when what we need, more than anything, is permission to sit down.

My father used to make me feel safe without asking me to prove I deserved it. Perhaps that is what I missed most. Not simply the man I had lost, but the freedom to be unguarded in his presence. To be a daughter. To be frightened. To be tired. To have someone look at me and understand without requiring an explanation.

I cannot make that chair occupied again. I cannot go back to the child who believed her father would always be there. And I cannot rewrite those early weeks with my son, when gratitude and grief occupied the same exhausted body.

But when I look back, I no longer want to applaud the woman who kept standing. I want to ask her why she thought she had to.

The chair was empty. The baby was in my arms. And somewhere between the two was a daughter who needed looking after, too.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a prestigious platform inviting writers from around the world to share their voices and stories. The competition celebrates literary creativity and diversity, offering a space for participants to express their unique perspectives and connect with a global audience through the written word.

We extend our heartfelt thanks to Dr Vanessa Ikin for her poignant contribution, "Death if Easy," to the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Her exploration of loss and motherhood resonates deeply, offering a compelling reminder of the strength found in vulnerability. We appreciate Dr Ikin's willingness to share this intimate journey with us and our audience.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.