Silence Not Closure

People talk about closure like it’s a thing you can wrap up in a box. Like it’s something you eventually find, if you just search long enough or say the right words.

But I didn’t get closure.

I got silence.

Not a dramatic goodbye. 

Not a final moment filled with peace or clarity.

I got a half-eaten ice cream sandwich.

I got a mother who disappeared long before she stopped breathing.

I got a lifetime of wondering.

I still remember the way she loved Christmas. She made everything feel magical. That last Christmas, I helped set up the gifts, even though everything already felt wrong. And when I sat down to read How the Grinch Stole Christmas, I didn’t know it would be the last time I read to her while she was still breathing. But deep down, I think I did know.

She didn’t respond.

She didn’t open her eyes.

She just… stopped.

And I was grabbed before I could run upstairs. Like they were trying to protect me from myself. My silence started there. I didn’t get to fall apart in that moment. I was just a kid, but I knew how to stay quiet. How to shrink. How to tuck away my grief neatly, so it didn’t make others uncomfortable.

Sometimes I wonder if I still do that.

If I still try to make my pain easier for everyone else to carry. Even when no one offers to carry mine.

Grief is strange.

Some days I’m okay.

Other days, something tiny cracks me wide open, and it all comes rushing back. The not-knowing. The empty chair. The bag in the freezer. The ghost of a goodbye I never got to say.

I didn’t get closure.

But I’ve learned to live with the silence.

Some days, I even talk back to it.