Some Days I Pretend He’s Just at a Friend’s House

It’s been 431 days since I last saw my son.

But some days, I pretend he’s just at a friend’s house.

I imagine his laughter echoing in someone else’s living room, his sneakers kicked off by the door, his phone left charging on the kitchen counter. I tell myself he’s staying up late playing video games, eating pizza rolls straight from the oven, yelling strategies over a headset. I picture him rolling his eyes when I call to check in. “Mom, I’m fine,” he would say, dragging out the word with teenage disdain, “I’m just at Jason’s.”

That lie—that beautiful lie—has become my survival.

Because the truth is too cruel.

Ethan was fourteen. One month from his fifteenth birthday. It was a rainy Thursday when the accident happened. One second he was pedaling his bike down Oakwood Street, late for soccer practice, and the next—just gone. The car, the driver, the silence. The kind of tragedy you read about but never expect to live through.

I don’t remember the scream that escaped me when the officers told me. I only remember the silence afterward, how it pressed in on my ears, thick and choking like smoke. How the walls of our home, once loud with music and arguments and jokes, became graveyards of sound.

His room is still the same. Blue walls. Posters of Messi and Marvel superheroes. A pile of laundry I never got to scold him for. I sit on the edge of his bed some nights and talk to the emptiness, telling him things like, “Don’t forget your jacket,” or, “I made your favorite pasta.” And when my voice breaks in the middle of a sentence, I pretend it’s because he interrupted me—just out of frame.

I know what people think. I see it in their eyes when they visit. They tiptoe around his name like it’s a curse, afraid I’ll shatter if they say it too loudly. They ask if I’ve considered therapy. If I’ve “moved on.” As if grief has an expiration date. As if you can pack away a child’s memory into cardboard boxes and tuck them into a closet labeled PAST.

But grief doesn’t ask permission. It takes up space. It sleeps in your bed, eats your meals, and whispers in your ear at night. It holds your hand when you’re alone and punches you in the chest when you hear a song he used to hum absentmindedly.

Still, I manage. I go to work. I smile when I have to. I send Christmas cards with one less name. I’ve learned how to live around the missing piece—how to speak without crying, how to laugh without guilt.

But some days, I fall apart.

And on those days, I pretend he’s just at a friend’s house.

It’s the little things that trick me—a jacket slung over a chair, a soccer ball in the garage, the way sunlight hits the corner of the hallway where he used to drop his backpack. I’ll find myself calling out, “Ethan, did you feed the dog?” before remembering that the dog passed away six months after him, as if it too couldn’t bear the weight of the silence.

I’ve stopped correcting myself.

Letting the illusion play out feels kinder than dragging my heart through the truth every hour.

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe healing isn’t always about accepting loss. Maybe it’s about learning to love in the present tense, even when the person you love exists only in memory. Maybe it’s okay to pretend, as long as the pretending helps you breathe.

Last week, I baked his favorite cookies. The house smelled like vanilla and cinnamon, like school bake sales and rainy afternoons. I set a few aside on a plate and placed them on the kitchen counter like I used to. For a moment, I imagined him bounding down the stairs, hair a mess, mouth open in a grin, grabbing two before I could say, “Just one!”

And in that moment, the ache softened.

The house didn’t feel so empty.

Love has a long echo. It lingers in doorways, in the scent of old T-shirts, in the click of light switches. It survives, even when the person doesn’t. And so, I love him in the only way I can now—through memory, imagination, and the quiet lies I tell myself on hard days.

Some days, I pretend he’s just at a friend’s house.

And for a little while, I believe it.