Because she's still alive

Greetings!

Life itself is a journey where a part of it on earth is ended by death, after which the person continues to live in places that are not on earth. This is what I've learned through various means, and I hope it's true, which means I would get to meet some of my deceased relatives in times to come. I've lost a lot of loved ones to death, and the shocking thing is that I will continue to lose them until it gets to my turn, where I'll be a loss to others on earth too.

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Among those I lost is my mom's only sister, whom I only knew when I was little.
Because I was little then, I could have dismissed the idea of writing about her, but no—the manner in which she died is a mystery. To tell you what, somehow, my maternal grandma, who died last year, still believed she was alive untill her death day, which gets me thinking sometimes that she may still be alive, even though we partially concluded that she was dead.

I know you're already confused. This is what happened:

Like I said, I was little then, a teen boy, but I was sensible of what was happening. She(my aunt) and Grandma lived in a rural area in Edo, and there was a trend those days where people were being sponsored overseas for a greener pasture. My late aunt was among those that traveled to a particular country by sea. Two days after she left, my uncle received a call from the seaport to report that my aunt's boat had capsized and none of the travelers survived.

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I was little then, so I didn't know the country they were traveling to or the person that was sponsoring them overseas. All I heard were lamentations, cries, and various calls that sounded international while they were trying to find out if the lady was actually dead, killed, or had disappeared because people believed those acts were common when traveling overseas.

I was very sensible when my grandma was going to different churches and native homes to seek help from prophets and seers to know if she was still alive. All the places she went to told her that she was still alive, and they demanded many things to make sacrifices for her to find her way back home.

Her death was the first time I lost someone I was very close to. I was her bestie because she liked my fair complexion, and anytime she visited our home, she always took me around. You know how hurtful it is to lose someone like that. It was very hard to believe, and thank God that my grandma's movements gave us that hope that she was still alive...so even in the midst of believing she's gone, we still had a jot of doubt in us*

Months and years passed. My grandma and my mom got tired of buying this and that for sacrifices, going to religious homes for prayers, which was costing money too, and there was no result of my aunt returning.
Oh yeah, that's how we gradually gave up over time and kept praying that if she was still alive, she would come back home to us one day.

To this day, she hasn't returned, and I'm smiling writing about this because she didn't give us a sharp pain. Instead, the news of her death came gradually and faded off gradually too. Ever since then, my mom has remained the only daughter of her late parents.

What I learned:

To be very sincere, what happened then has somehow added a little detest to the idea of traveling abroad for greener pastures under a not straightforward sponsor.

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Thanks for reading.

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_{This is my entry to the Week 117, Edition 01 of the Weekly Featured contest in Hive Learners Community}