Have you ever thought about death?

Not in the dramatic movie way. Not old age, hospitals, or some distant future that belongs to someone else. I mean really thought about it — that death could come on the most ordinary day, while crossing the road or while holding your mom’s hand.

Most of us live as if life is endless, like we live ethernal life.

I used to think that too. I remember the feeling of that time very clearly. Childhood felt painfully slow back then. No phones. No internet. Just long afternoons that felt like they would never end.

Every other weekend mom and I visited my uncle. I remember those evenings well — adults drinking tea in the kitchen, conversations stretching for hours, me wandering around bored, waiting to go home.

That day, when we finally left, the bus was so late. Nearly an hour, came with overflowing with people. Faces pressed against the windows.

By the time it arrived, people rushed toward it like they had been waiting their entire lives. There was no way we could fit in there.

I looked at my mother and said quietly,

“I don’t want to get on this bus. Let’s wait for the next one.”

But she insisted. “The next one could take just as long.”

Back then there were no proper lines to queue. Everyone pushed from all sides trying to get inside first before the doors being closed.

I remember squeezing my mother’s hand as hard as I could as we went toward the crowd . Adults seemed enormous from my height. Like walls moving against each other. Then suddenly I lost my mom’s hand and the pushing became even stronger until I couldn’t take a move and breathe.

I wanted to scream but no sound came out. My chest tightened so hard that panic flooded through my whole body. Everything around me became smaller and smaller, darker and darker.

And then—nothing.

When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t on the bus anymore. I was nowhere. Only darkness. Not the darkness behind closed eyes. This darkness felt endless, like the whole world had disappeared. No sound. No sense of my body. Just awareness floating somewhere I couldn’t understand.

I remember being terrified. Not because I was hurt. Because I was alone and that I might remain there forever alone. At that moment the only thing I wanted was my mom.

And suddenly, the life I took for granted was no longer felt boring anymore. It felt beautiful. Precious. I wanted everything back — the ordinary days, the streets I knew, sitting beside my mother, even the things I used to complain about.

I remember begging God to bring me back to my mom. With absolute desperation.

I promised everything a little girl could promise. I will be good. I will listen to her. I will make her happy. Just let me go back.

Then, in the middle of all that darkness, I saw it.

A tiny point of light.

Small and distant. Almost invisible.

But somehow I knew that if I could reach it, everything would become normal again.

The strange thing was, I didn’t know how to reach there. I could only look at it from far away.

So I closed my eyes again and begged harder this time. Not just from fear, but from desire. From something deep inside me that desperately wanted to return to my mom.

When I opened my eyes again, I was back and my mother was there. Crying above me. Her voice shaking as she kept asking if I was okay.

I was lying in the middle of the road behind the bus. I would say it was the happiest time of my life.

After I lost consciousness, it turns out I had fallen underneath the bus. The crowd didn’t even notice at first after bus had already started moving a little then someone saw me there.

Later my mother told me there was also a large hole in the road nearby. If I had fallen there, nobody knows what could have happened.

But somehow, here I am. Alive.

Sometimes I think that little girl’s prayer was heard that day. And maybe that moment changed my way of looking at life without me realizing it. After that, life never felt fully ordinary or boring again.

Because once you have sat inside darkness begging for another chance to live, even the smallest moments begin to feel sacred.