I was wrong about so many things.
The Silence That Followed Her Death
The house still smelled like antiseptic and her lavender lotion when we buried her on a gray October afternoon. The funeral was a blur of black clothing and whispered condolences and casseroles from neighbors who didn’t know what else to do. People kept saying the same useless things, the kind of platitudes that are supposed to help but only make the silence louder.
“She’s not in pain anymore.”
“She was so strong. So brave.”
“You’ll be okay, honey. Time helps. Time heals everything.”
But time did nothing. It just made the empty spaces more obvious. Mom’s reading glasses still sat on the kitchen counter where she’d left them. Her favorite coffee mug remained in the cabinet, the one with the faded flowers that she’d used every morning for twenty years. Her coat still hung by the front door, and every time I walked past it, I had to resist the urge to bury my face in it and sob.
The silence in that house was deafening. Growing up, there had always been noise—Mom humming while she cooked, the sound of her footsteps moving from room to room, her voice calling us down for dinner. Now there was just emptiness and the constant, painful awareness that she was never coming back.
