It had been one month since my son d.i.3.d, and the world still felt unreal, as though I were moving through it underwater. His name was Oliver, and he was eight years old. He was old enough to ride his bike confidently, old enough to read chapter books on his own, and old enough to argue passionately about dinosaurs, planets, and which superhero would win in a fight.
He was old enough to have a future that should not have ended on an ordinary weekday afternoon.
A driver didn’t see him as he rode home from school. There was no dramatic buildup, no warning, and no final goodbye.
One moment he existed in the world, and the next he didn’t. Just like that, everything split cleanly in two: the life before Oliver, and the life after.
Since that day, time had lost its shape.
Weeks blurred together into a dull gray haze. Our house felt heavier, as if grief had weight and had settled into the walls, the floors, and the air itself. Every room held echoes of him.
Silence pressed in where his voice used to be.
Sometimes I would find myself standing in his bedroom without remembering how I got there, staring at the half-finished Lego spaceship on his desk. The instructions were still open, creased at the page where he had stopped.
His books lay scattered across the floor, and his favorite hoodie was draped over the back of his chair. When I leaned down, I could still smell his shampoo on his pillow.
It was clean, faintly citrus, and unmistakably his.
Walking into that room felt like stepping into a memory that refused to fade, a moment frozen in time that no longer had a future attached to it. Grief came in waves. Some mornings, the weight of it pinned me to the mattress, and I could barely summon the strength to sit up.
Other days, I went through the motions of normal life.
I made breakfast, folded laundry, and answered emails while pretending I was still a complete person. I smiled when I was supposed to smile.
I spoke when spoken to. I existed.
My husband, Thomas, tried to stay strong for us.
I could see it in the way he squared his shoulders and forced himself into routine. He worked longer hours now, throwing himself into tasks that kept his hands busy and his mind occupied. When he came home, he hugged our daughter just a little too tightly, as if afraid she might disappear too.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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