The Silent Writer

I always hoped the doctors were wrong. That he’d get older and talk like every other kid. Like normal kids. I’d tell him, whining won’t get you what you want words will. He’d try to talk, like open his mouth and hope words would come out. It hurt to watch him cry when they didn’t.

Even still, I took him to appointments every other week. Maybe the doctors would say something different. They never did. It was always, help him something to control his rage(which stemmed from him not being able to talk), or he needs an outlet. But what can I do? Nobody can force Howy to do anything, so he had to find his own outlet.

One day I found a piece of paper under my pillow. It was a little story. I teared as I read it. It was beautiful, and heartbreaking at the same time. I read it twice in disbelief that it was my son who wrote it. I walked to his room the next day to ask him about why he’d written what he did. Why he thought his life would end the way it did in the story. When I got to his door he had on headphones, and was listening to music on his computer.

In a short time he turned to me, and spoke with his fingers. Even though I hadn’t the slightest clue what he said, I smiled. He had learned to speak another way.

The next few years were blissful. We’d both learned how to sign fluently. Howy wasn’t as angry anymore, actually barely angry at all. His writing progressed with age. I cried every time I read his work. He’d published many short stories, and was working on a novel.

On his twenty-third birthday he ran in the house more happy than I'd ever seen him in his life. He was so excited he was skating, and couldn’t sign. He wrote on the refrigerator white board, “my book is being stocked! I did it!” We celebrated.

The next years after that we struggled for nothing. Howy Lonnell was a household name. His book was read all over the world. He was so happy. Or at least I thought he was. One day I stepped past his room, and he was crying. Harder than I’ve seen him in a long while. I’d assumed it was from regular stress. I wish I would’ve asked. I wish I would’ve seen if he was ok, or gave him a hug, told him everything would be alright, and let him cry on me.

The next morning was the worst day of my life. I went to get laundry from his room, because he appeared to still be sleeping. Normally I would never read his things unless he asked me to, but for some reason, today I felt like I needed to.

My heart began to break. The note I read told of how he was stuck. How he’d come to a hard impasse, and couldn’t write anymore, and how he’s come to a realization that writing shaped his life. He felt like it was nothing without it. It said how this hole in him, and deep depression he began to feel constantly was nothing new. He signed it, love you forever.

I went to the cover and shook him, but he didn’t wake up. At last, I pulled back the cover, and dropped to my knees. There were lines in his arms that went to his elbows, but the closest to his hands were new. He’d bled out, alone in his room.

I’d never been the same. Everyday I read his stories. I couldn’t bring myself to read his book until today. The mute boy who makes it, he called it. As I read it, i’d wished he was here to read it with me.