Grief wears many masks. Sometimes, it screams. Sometimes, it isolates. And sometimes, it is quiet—aching behind dry eyes, folded into letters no one was ever meant to read.
I once believed love had to be visible to be real. But I’ve learned that some of the truest forms of love are silent. Hidden. Worn like armor, not to protect oneself, but to shield someone else.
Sam’s silence wasn’t absence—it was love, buried deep, carried heavily, and expressed the only way he knew how.
And in finally hearing that quiet love, I found something I’d lost along the way: peace.She didn’t waste time on pleasantries. She simply said, “There’s something you deserve to know.”
She told me about a lake.
A place I had forgotten—but Sam never had.
On the night our son died, he drove there alone. It was where he used to take our boy—just the two of them. A quiet stretch of water surrounded by trees, where they talked when words felt necessary and sat in silence when they didn’t. Where stones were skipped and memories were made without noise.
She told me Sam went there often. Sometimes weekly. Sometimes daily.
