The chapel smelled like lilies and polished wood, the kind of scent people associate with respect and closure, but all it did was make my stomach twist. My father’s casket sat at the front beneath soft lights, surrounded by wreaths arranged so perfectly they looked more like decoration than grief. The room was filled with people who had known him as a leader, a benefactor, a man with a firm handshake and a bigger-than-life reputation. They wore their sorrow carefully, dabbing at their eyes and speaking in low voices the way people do when they’re trying to seem reverent.

I sat in the second row with my hands folded so tightly my fingers hurt, staring straight ahead as if looking away would crack something open inside me that I couldn’t afford to spill in public. I hadn’t seen my father in almost two years, not because I didn’t know how to find him, but because our relationship had always been a slow erosion rather than one dramatic break. We didn’t end with screaming; we ended with silence—his favorite weapon, his most reliable way of telling me I was optional. Still, sitting there, I felt the strange, complicated grief of mourning a person and a possibility at the same time.