He was nineteen.
Young enough that half his life was still in my house. His old sneakers sat by the garage door for months because I couldn’t make myself move them. His hoodie hung behind his bedroom door, and for a long time it still smelled like his detergent. I used to open the door just to breathe it in, then close it fast, as if the smell might run out.
Eventually, I packed some things away.
Not everything.
Grief makes you strange about objects. A chipped coffee mug becomes sacred. A crumpled grocery receipt becomes impossible to throw away because your child scribbled something on the back of it.
The cemetery became the only place where I stopped pretending I was doing better than I was.
I went every Sunday.
At first, I went because staying home felt worse. Then it became the shape of my week. Same coffee from the same little shop near my house. Same drive across town. Same parking spot under the row of old oaks. Same path to Caleb’s grave.
Sometimes I brought flowers. Sometimes I just talked.
“I ran into your old friend Marcus at the grocery store.”
