The Leftover Light

The morning after the funeral, I made tea for two.

One cup went untouched, the steam rising alone.

I don’t know why I did it. Muscle memory, maybe. Or some soft part of my brain that refused to update itself to reality. I set her mug — chipped blue rim and all — down on the table and sat across from it like I was waiting for her to walk in and scold me for oversteeping.

She hated bitter tea.

She hated silence, too.

But now the house is full of both.

They say grief is loud — sobbing, yelling, fists pounding the chest.

But mine is quiet. It creeps in through the vents. It perches on the kitchen sink.

It’s the half-sliced onion I found browning in the fridge, the last page of the crossword she left blank.

It’s the sweater draped over the back of the couch, still shaped like her shoulders.

I thought I’d cry at the funeral. I didn’t.

I thought it would hit me in the obvious moments — lowering the casket, folding the program in half.

But no. It’s in the folding laundry. The mail with her name still on it. The “Did you forget?” pharmacy texts on her phone.

The pain lives in the mundane.

On the third day, I tried to open her closet.

Not to pack anything — not yet. Just to… feel it.

The scent hit me like an old memory. Soft perfume, cedar hangers, a faint powder smell like lilies and linen.

I stood there too long.

I pressed my face into the sleeve of her winter coat and realized I couldn’t remember the last time she wore it.

Grief does this thing. It makes memories slippery. I chase them down like fireflies — catch one, and it dims the moment I try to hold it.

She loved the sunlight in the afternoon.

Every day, around 3:30 p.m., she’d say, “Now this is the light I’d want to die in.”

We’d laugh.

Sometimes she’d sit in her armchair by the window, her face turned upward like a flower, half asleep, whispering poems I never wrote down.

Now I sit in that chair. The sun still comes, dutiful and warm, lighting up the dust in golden halos.

She’s not in the chair, but she’s in the light.

I keep thinking if I sit here long enough, maybe the warmth will become her voice again. Maybe I’ll hear her hum.

The kettle whistles. That’s new. I forgot to set the timer and the water boiled too long.

She would have called that “wasting electricity.”

Funny how these tiny things become dialogue with the dead.

I pour a fresh cup of tea anyway.

Milk, one sugar. Just how she liked it.

I sit at the table again, alone this time.

I don’t set out the second cup, but I glance at the cupboard where it lives.

There’s a photo on the hallway shelf. One of the ones from when she was younger — dark hair tied back, smile crooked, eyes daring you to say something too serious.

I never asked her what she was thinking in that photo. I always meant to.

It’s strange, the questions you carry with you when someone’s alive — how easily you believe you’ll always have time to ask them.

Now the photo asks back.

I can’t answer.

Last night, I dreamed she was waiting at the end of the hallway.

I couldn’t see her clearly, but she held out a hand, palm open. I walked toward her slowly, my feet heavy, like moving through water.

Just before I reached her, she turned and walked away.

I woke up in tears for the first time since the funeral.

Maybe grief needed that.

Maybe I did, too.

There’s no great resolution here.

She’s still gone.

The laundry still waits.

The sunlight still comes at 3:30 and paints the armchair gold.

But today, I opened the window.

I let the wind in. I let the light fall on the floor.

And I sat in it.

Not waiting. Just sitting.

Maybe that’s the first kind of peace.