I Still Talk to Him, Even Though He's Gone

I still talk to him.

In the mornings, as I pour coffee into my favorite chipped mug, I tell him what kind of dream I had. Sometimes they’re weird—like the one with the talking dog and the broken escalator—and I can almost hear him laughing, that low, chest-deep laugh that used to rumble next to me in bed.

I talk to him when I drive. When I'm stuck at red lights or when a song we both loved comes on. I comment out loud like he's in the passenger seat. “Remember this one?” I’ll say. “You played it on repeat until I threatened to throw your phone out the window.” Then I smile, because he would’ve dared me to.

It’s been three years since he died.


---

The night it happened, I didn’t know what was coming. We’d had chicken tikka for dinner, and he’d teased me about always ordering the same thing. “You’re scared of spice,” he grinned. I tossed a napkin at him and rolled my eyes.

That was the last full conversation we had.

He collapsed in the middle of brushing his teeth. An aneurysm, they said. No warning. No pain. Gone in seconds. My life unraveled in the time it took for a toothbrush to hit the floor.

The days after were silent chaos. Family, phone calls, casseroles in foil trays. I drifted through them in a fog, unable to process that he was no longer in the world.


---

But then something strange happened: I kept talking to him. Not because I believed he was still here—not in a ghost-story kind of way—but because I didn’t know how not to.

The conversations started small. I’d whisper his name before falling asleep. Tell him I missed him while stirring pasta. Ask what he thought about the show I was watching, then answer for him in my head. It felt insane at first—like my grief was turning into delusion.

But it also felt...right. Comforting.

Eventually, I stopped judging myself for it. Talking to him didn’t mean I hadn’t accepted he was gone. It meant I still carried him with me. That the connection hadn’t ended; it had just changed shape.


---

I remember the first time I really laughed again. I was at the grocery store, standing in front of the cereal aisle, and I saw his favorite: Honey Nut Cheerios. He used to hoard boxes like there’d be a global shortage. I muttered, “You’d lose your mind over this sale,” and laughed out loud. People stared. I didn’t care.

He would’ve laughed too.


---

Grief is not a straight line. It’s not even a winding road. It’s a tide—coming in, pulling back, coming in again. Some days I feel like I’ve moved forward, that I’m okay. Other days, a scent or a song wrecks me.

But talking to him anchors me. It’s how I carry the love without being crushed by the loss.

I’ve moved on in some ways. I changed jobs. I redecorated the apartment. I started dating again, carefully, respectfully. I told him about it—my nerves, my guilt, the way it felt to laugh with someone new. I asked for his blessing in a whisper one night, curled up under the blanket we once shared.

I think he gave it to me, not in a dramatic sign, but in a quiet peace that settled in my chest.


---

People ask me sometimes, “Does it get easier?”

I never know how to answer. It doesn’t get easier. You get stronger. You learn how to carry it better. You stop expecting to "get over it" and instead figure out how to live with it. How to let grief walk beside you without letting it block the light.

And sometimes that means you talk to someone who’s gone. Because love doesn’t vanish with a heartbeat. Because their absence is still full of presence.

Because some conversations don’t need replies to be real.


---

So yes, I still talk to him.

I tell him when I’m scared. I thank him when something beautiful happens. I ask him what he thinks about things he’ll never get to see. And sometimes, in the stillness, I imagine what he might say back.

Even though he’s gone, I will always have something to say to him. And I like to think he’s still listening.