“There are traces of him everywhere I look, and sometimes, when no one is watching I magnify a trace- like the time he was staring into space,lost in thought, or that time while we were watching Teen Titans with the kids and he asked ‘have you ever wondered if this life is worth it?’ and I asked ‘what? How?’ and he shrugged and said ‘ I’m just thinking out loud.’

Then some traces become the air I breathe like how he would sigh every morning before going to work, and how he’d stay in his car for an hour every day when he got home.

Was it me? Then I realize it wasn’t about me, it was never about me and to try and even make it about me, takes away from him, from the pain from the suffocation he felt. Life choked him. How painful was that for him?

Will I ever know?

And when everyone tells me Em’s, ‘sorry for your loss‘ I want to throw it back at them ‘sorry for yourself, let me be’ So, I stay in the quiet of my confusion and anger, and try my best to stifle the anger because all I’m left with are questions and nothing kills faster than the “what if?” questions and they are the kind that surround me.

I stay in the quiet…sometimes, the truth lurks in there.”