When time seemed to stop for everyone else, my heart raced faster. Every second felt like a decade, filled with fear and a thousand thoughts swirling in my mind.

I kept asking myself questions I couldn’t answer, trying to calm down, but my curiosity only grew stronger. I needed to understand what was happening.

Finally, I convinced myself this wasn’t the past—it couldn’t be. It had to be a dream. My father hadn’t died before; he died on my fourteenth birthday, the same day my mother ...