They say grief comes in waves. Mine came when I realized he wasn’t coming home. At 31, when I should’ve been planning nurseries and picking out baby names, I was choosing flowers for my husband’s casket.
I’m Colleen, and this is how his family tried to steal the last piece of him I had left. Ethan was everything they weren’t. Kind where they were cruel.
Gentle where they were harsh. When he chose architecture over medicine, his family cut him off like a diseased limb. Seven years of silence.
Seven years of holidays spent with just us two. And seven years of them pretending their son didn’t exist. But Margaret, his grandmother, was different.
She saw what I saw in Ethan. The way his eyes lit up when he talked about designing homes for families. The way he’d spend hours sketching impossible buildings that somehow made perfect sense.
When we got engaged, she pressed her heirloom ring into my palm. Her fingers were fragile, but her grip was steel. I’d spent Margaret’s final year driving her to doctor visits.
I cooked her meals. And read to her when her eyes gave out. “This belongs with you now, dear.
Promise me you’ll take care of it like you’re caring for him.”
“I promise, Margaret.”
When Ethan and I got married, it was simple. Just us, two witnesses, Margaret, and a judge who looked bored out of his mind. Ethan wore his father’s old tie, the only thing he’d kept from that house.
I wore Margaret’s ring and a dress from the department store clearance rack. “You look beautiful,” he said, adjusting my veil. “Even in this old thing?”
“Especially in this old thing.
My family doesn’t know what they’re missing.”
We used to lie in bed talking about the future: How many kids we’d have. What we’d name them. Whether they’d get his curls or my stubborn streak.
It felt so close, like we were just a season away from it all becoming real. Then came the call three months ago that shattered everything. A foreman told me there’d been a scaffolding collapse at Ethan’s job site.
The details were blurry, something my fashion-designing brain couldn’t fully make sense of. But I understood the only part that mattered… Ethan was gone. I planned everything alone.
I picked the casket. I wrote the obituary. And I chose the songs he would’ve wanted.
But his family? They remained radio silent until the morning of the funeral. Then they all appeared like vultures circling roadkill.
***
The funeral home felt too small with them there. Joe and Beth, his parents, sat in the front row like they belonged there. Like they hadn’t spent seven years pretending their son was dead to them already.
I delivered the eulogy with shaking hands. I talked about Ethan’s dreams. His kindness.
His laugh that could fill a room. His love. God, I missed him like my life had been ripped out of me.
“He used to say buildings were just love made visible,” I whispered into the microphone. “Every beam, window, and door was his way of creating homes for families to grow in.”
Beth wiped her eyes with tissue. Joe stared at his shoes.
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