– He didn’t succeed.

That was it.

No explanation.
No goodbye.
No proof.

I remember saying, “No… I heard it.”

He told me he needed to rest.

A doctor came in. Someone gave me something.

When I woke up, I felt like everything inside me had been emptied.

I asked again.

“Where is?”

She turned a page in her magazine and said,
“You have to move on.”

I asked him if there would be a funeral.

“There’s nothing you can do here,” he replied.

That night, when she left, a nurse calmly returned.

He slipped me a piece of paper and whispered,
“If you want to write something… I’ll try to send it with him.”

I had nothing left.

Except for one thing.

I wrote a single sentence:

“Tell him he was loved.”

I gave her the note and a small blanket I’d secretly made. Blue wool. Yellow birds sewn into the corners. The only thing I felt belonged to both of us.

The next day, everything was gone.

When I asked her about the blanket later, my mother said she had burned it. She said it wasn’t healthy for me to endure.

And then they sent me to university… before I had healed.

There is no grave.
No answers.
No closure.

So I stopped asking.

I learned to bear the pain in silence, without making anyone uncomfortable.

My mother died two years ago.

My father moved out last year after his health began to decline. His memory isn’t perfect anymore, but he’s not gone.

Remember what you choose to remember.

Last week, a moving truck entered the house next door.

I was outside pulling up the grass when I saw him, a young man coming out, carrying a lamp.

And my heart stopped.

Dark curls.
Sharp features.
My chin.

See continues on the next page