The first weeks after Samuel’s funeral were a blur of shadow and numbness. I walked through our Victorian house as if it belonged to someone else, touching familiar surfaces, inhaling the scent of old wood and lavender, and feeling nothing. It was strange how grief can hollow a person from the inside out, leaving a quiet echo where love, laughter, and companionship used to live. Friends and neighbors came and went with casseroles, hugs, and murmured condolences, all of which I received politely but mechanically, like a robot running through motions it didn’t fully comprehend. Samuel had been my anchor, my mirror, my partner in a life we had spent eleven years building together, and now he was gone.

Every routine reminded me of him—the way he always brewed coffee first thing in the morning, the soft hum he made while walking through the kitchen, the subtle shrug he gave when I teased him for leaving his socks around the house. Those little things, once so ordinary, had become unbearable relics. I learned quickly that grief doesn’t only come in waves; it settles, infiltrates, and demands attention even when you try to ignore it.