They learn to live inside the ache, not beyond it. The cup on the counter is finally washed, but not without a whispered apology. A pair of shoes is moved to a closet, and the guilt of that small act almost buckles their knees. Friends visit less, not because they’ve stopped caring, but because the world keeps demanding their return. The parents stay where the silence is loudest, curators of a life interrupted, tracing photographs like fragile relics of a vanished future.
Slowly, the house does not heal so much as soften. Laughter returns in brief, startled bursts, as if it’s unsure it has permission to exist. New routines grow carefully around a space that will never be filled. They speak their child’s name out loud, not as a wound but as a blessing. Love, once a sharp reminder of absence, becomes the quiet spine of their days, steadying each step through rooms that remember everything.
