The silence of an empty house has a weight that is far heavier than any noise. I woke up on a Tuesday morning to a world that felt fundamentally tilted. The left side of our bed, usually warm with Jenna’s presence, was cold and meticulously smoothed over. At first, I leaned into the comfort of routine, assuming she had simply headed into the hospital early for a double shift. But when I walked into the bathroom to splash water on my face, the sight of her wedding band sitting alone on the edge of the porcelain sink stopped the breath in my lungs.
Beneath the ring was a crumpled grocery receipt. I smoothed it out with trembling fingers, hoping for a grocery list or a mundane reminder. Instead, four words were scrawled in her familiar, elegant script, though the ink was smeared by what looked like teardrops: “Don’t look for me.”Continue reading…
