She wanted to become a veterinarian, working with animals that couldn’t speak for themselves.
“They can’t tell you what’s hurting them, Mom. I still want to learn to listen,” she always said.
The house was silent now. There was no laughter in the kitchen. There was no indie music coming from her room, nor the sound of her wheeled office chair scraping across the floor as she danced between homework.
Only the disturbing silence of a house that has lost its meaning.
David stood beside me, at the edge of the grave. His black suit was too neat, his posture too upright—every detail meticulously crafted. His face remained impassive: not a tic, not a tear, not the slightest crack in his mask. He was like a man reciting the memorized lines of a play that held no interest for him.
But it had been like this for a long time. The distance between us grew slowly, without a crack, like a silent click. And one day, nothing remained—nothing but air between two strangers, playing husband and wife.
On the way back from the cemetery, I leaned my forehead against the car window and watched the world pass by like a watercolor fading to gray. My throat ached from hours of crying, but I had no more tears to shed.
I was just empty.
“Shay,” David said, clearing his throat, “we should go to the donation center. I want to check their schedule. Linda said she would go home and bring food so people could help themselves. I told him to do it in the garden.”
“Why?” I turned to him, confused.
“I think we should start packing Emily’s things, Shay. You know… while they’re still fresh. Otherwise, his company will be going strong for years.”
“Are you serious, David?” I asked, blinking slowly, feeling a headache coming on.
“The more you cling to the past, the harder it is to move forward. It’s like ripping off a band-aid; you have to do it quickly. Think about it, Shay. It’s the smartest solution.”
“My baby was just buried, David. Save yourself some money.”
I didn’t say anything more. I couldn’t. I just stared at him, wondering what kind of father would be so determined to forget.
As we pulled into the driveway, my heart sank, thinking that my daughter would never walk down the hallway again. She would never come home, take off her shoes, or ask what I had prepared for her for a snack.
As I walked down the hallway, I noticed that the boxes were already neatly stacked against the wall. David’s handwritten labels, written in his meticulous calligraphy, stared back at me.
Linda told him it might help him occupy his time. Maybe she was thinking about household chores like dishes and laundry instead of erasing our daughter’s existence.
Give. Throw away. Keep.
He has already started.
“When did you do that?” I grimaced.
“When you were at the funeral home this morning. You handled it… I couldn’t have done anything else, Shay. This is how I deal with it.”
I stood in the hallway for a moment, looking at them. It was surreal, like I’d entered someone else’s home, a home where my daughter had never existed. The boxes felt like a transaction, as if mourning were a task to be completed before next Tuesday.
I didn’t say a word; I simply turned on my heel and went upstairs. The bathroom door slammed quietly behind me as I closed it. I sat on the edge of the bathtub, leaned forward, and buried my face in my hands.
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