The Internal Splintering
The quiet crack is always unexpected, even when you know it’s coming. It doesn’t arrive with the force of a sudden break, but rather the sound of ice shifting in a deep, cold lake-a silent internal splintering that only you can hear.
He was sitting in the worn leather armchair, the one he insisted on keeping even after we bought the new sofa, holding the silver-framed picture. My wedding photo. His face, once sharp and analytical-the face of a history professor who could recite the detailed troop movements of the Peloponnesian War on demand-was now softened by confusion, the edges blurred by something I can only call absence. He looked up at me, sunlight catching the dust motes spinning over his head, and asked, clear as day, “They look happy. Who are they, exactly?”
I smiled. I said the words-It’s Sarah and me, Dad. Your wedding day, remember?-the choreography of the explanation, performed now maybe 43 times this year alone, felt mechanical. And that’s when the crack came. Not grief for the memory he lost; that’s the narrative everyone focuses on. The real sting is the grief for the future I just lost, again, in that instant.


















































