At the City Council, where the wake was held, grief gathered slowly and then all at once, filling the space until it felt too small to contain it. People arrived quietly, as if sound itself might fracture what little composure remained. The coffins were arranged with care, each one a boundary that could not be crossed, no matter how desperately hands wanted to reach out. The absence was overwhelming not because the room was empty, but because it was full of people who could not accept what they were seeing. Silence often spoke louder than tears. There were moments when no one cried, when the only sound was the shifting of feet or the low hum of breathing, and those moments carried a weight that words never could. Friends clasped hands, sometimes without knowing whose hand they were holding, as if human contact alone could anchor them. Neighbors embraced strangers, united not by familiarity but by shared loss, because tragedy erases the lines between households and turns a town into a single, grieving body. Stories passed from person to person like fragile candles in the dark: memories of Drielle’s determination, of Helena’s shy smile, of João Lúcio’s curiosity, of José Augusto’s small fingers curling around those he trusted. Each story felt like an act of resistance against forgetting, a refusal to let them be reduced to headlines or statistics. In that space, grief was not private. It was communal, heavy, and strangely protective, as if by carrying it together, no one would have to collapse under its full weight alone.
