The morning after Bert passed, I woke up expecting Starlight Cove to be in utter devastation. Buildings outside in rubble, streets covered in ash, everything enveloped in that horrible silence that follows a catastrophe.
When I stepped outside, the world had the audacity to continue. My neighbors wind chimes danced on the breeze, birds chirped beneath a bright blue sky, and that familiar aroma of Brady’s coffee wafted from The Square as it had every day of my life.
How dare life continue. How dare it continue as if nothing changed.
My life imploded like a nuclear bomb as Bert took his final breath. I was hollow, still able to walk, yet my soul barely tethered to this body. A single thread kept me here. My son. Parker. Parker had returned home to be with us.
Dust motes danced as Parker slept on the couch downstairs. I heard him stir throughout the night, no doubt as restless as me. He was always such a light sleeper, like his father. So very much like his father.
I’ve been avoiding the right side of the bed. Sheets remained unwrinkled, pristine. After countless years of reaching over to touch Bert's shoulder in the morning, my hand finds only empty space. Muscle memory is cruel. My body hadn't yet learned what my heart knew with crushing certainty.
Fifty years. I'd already bought him the damn card – it's still hidden in my sock drawer. Loving words of forever now trapped in a paper prison. Our plans now ghosts too.
His coffee mug still sits on the counter where he left it, coffee stains marking his last sip. I can't bring myself to wash it. As if doing so would erase one more trace of him from this world. He lives in every fiber of this home; the squeaky floorboard he always meant to fix, his reading glasses on the nightstand, smudged with fingerprints I refuse to clean, his cardigan still hangs on the hook by the door. Sometimes I bury my face in it, searching for his scent that grows fainter with each passing day.
Parker tells me I need to get out more. But I step outside to the cheerful Cove, and see the flowerpots full of life Bert planted, fruit trees bursting with color because Bert loved them. How do you explain to your son, the police chief, that even the simple act of grocery shopping feels like betrayal? Bert always insisted on pushing the cart, making silly faces at babies we passed, sneaking cookies into the basket when he thought I wasn't looking. Now I stand in aisles we walked together, surrounded by strangers who don't know they're shopping in a memory.
People say it gets easier with time. They don't tell you that 'easier' means learning to carry your grief every moment forward, building calluses on your heart. I still tell him I love him every night before I sleep, whispered words into his pillow. Some loves don't end with death. They just change addresses.
Oh my God, Maryellen, I cried through this. You captured my world perfectly. Replace Bert with my wife, Kathleen, and the story is about me. Thank you.
A powerful and moving piece that captures the solidity of grief, the difficulty of letting go. Thanks for sharing this!