What Sam taught me—silently, in death—is that unspoken truths don’t disappear. They echo. They alter the path of our lives. They fester in the places where love once lived.
And the longer they stay hidden, the harder it becomes to repair what’s been broken.
He showed up. He worked hard. He tried. And in his own way, he grieved.
Just… not with me.
The Box He Left Behind
I eventually opened the small box his wife had brought.
Inside were a few of our son’s childhood drawings—carefully folded and yellowed with time.
Tucked underneath was a photo of Sam and our son fishing on a foggy morning, both of them laughing.
And behind that, a letter.
“I forgive you. I wish I had said it sooner. But you need to hear it now. I never stopped loving him. Or you. I just didn’t know how to carry both the love and the lie at the same time.”
He signed it simply:
—Sam
