ADVERTISEMENT
Grief is rarely the thunderous collapse depicted in cinema; it is more often a quiet tenant that moves into the vacant spaces of a life without asking permission. When my father passed away, the sorrow didn’t arrive with a dramatic flourish. Instead, it settled into the mundane rhythm of my existence, manifesting in the heavy silence of his favorite armchair and the instinctive, painful urge to text him a trivial observation about the weather or a passing thought. It was a presence that didn’t shout to be heard; it simply stayed, persistent and low-frequency, a shadow that lengthened as the days grew short.
The formal reading of the will was an exercise in sterile detachment. In a room paneled with dark wood and filled with the scent of old paper, the complexities of a man’s life were reduced to legal jargon and numerical columns. My half-sister sat across from me, a picture of composed expectation. When the attorney began to speak, the division of the estate was as lopsided as it was predictable. She was the primary beneficiary, inheriting the family home, the robust savings accounts, the diversified investment portfolios, and all the artifacts of a life that carried recognized social weight and liquid value. She sat tall, nodding as each asset was checked off a list, her future and the futures of her children seemingly secured in a single afternoon.
ADVERTISEMENT
