By the time prom season arrived, I thought I understood exactly how grief worked.
I thought it moved in recognizable waves. I thought it announced itself in obvious ways—the sleepless nights, the sudden tears in grocery store aisles, the way silence could still hit like a physical thing if I walked past my husband’s empty side of the bed too quickly. I thought I understood the shape of it because for eleven months I had been living inside it.
I was wrong.
My daughter Lisa was supposed to go to prom in a sunset-colored silk dress.
Instead, she walked onto that stage in old jeans, worn boots, and a faded jacket, wearing a white T-shirt that made an entire room fall apart.
And I am still not sure I have fully recovered from what happened next.
My husband died eleven months ago.
Even now, writing that feels unnatural, as if I am describing someone else’s life. For months after he was gone, I kept hearing him where he no longer was—in the kitchen, in the driveway, coughing from the bedroom, calling out from the other room. Then the house would go still again, and the truth would return with that same quiet brutality.
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