The Hidden Grief I Never Knew

The Grief I Never Saw

My son was sixteen when an accident took him.
And my husband, Sam, never shed a tear.

Not in the hospital when the machines went still.
Not at the funeral as I clung to the coffin.
Not in the hollow house where our boy’s laughter once lived.

I grieved out loud.
Sam grieved by vanishing—into work, into chores, into a silence so heavy it split us apart.