The Silence Between Lighting.

The storm began the night my father stopped speaking.

At first, I thought it was just the rain—thick sheets slamming against our farmhouse windows like fists of water. The lightning came in bursts, brief and violent, illuminating the hollow look in his eyes. Then came the silence, longer than thunder’s pause, deeper than the quiet that follows grief.

He sat in the wooden rocking chair on the porch, unmoving, hands gripping the armrests, as if holding on would keep him from slipping away. My mother had died two weeks before, and since the funeral, he hadn’t said a word. Not even to me.

I was fourteen, with lungs full of unasked questions and a notebook full of sketches I no longer showed anyone. We lived miles from the nearest neighbor, and even farther from anyone who understood how a house full of silence could be louder than any scream.

I sat beside him that night, my own hands trembling as I watched the storm roll over the wheat fields. Lightning split the sky again, searing a white scar across the horizon. I counted: one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three—

Thunder crashed like the sky falling in on itself.

Then silence again. Not peace—that sharp, suspended silence, like the moment between inhale and exhale, when the world is holding its breath.

That’s where my father lived now—in the silence between lightning. Somewhere unreachable.

He hadn’t always been like that. I remembered his voice like a warm coat around me. He used to tell stories during storms, made-up tales about cloud beasts and thunder drums. He'd say, “You know, lightning never asks for permission—it just shows up, loud and bright, and dares the dark to swallow it.”

But the storm that took my mother had changed everything.

It had been a quiet one. No lightning, no rain, just a strange heaviness in the air. She’d gone to sleep and never woken up. A stroke, the doctor said. Sudden. Unexpected. As if the silence had stolen her away.

That night, as lightning flashed again, I decided I couldn’t let the silence steal my father too.

I leaned toward him. “Dad,” I said softly, barely louder than the rain, “do you remember the story about the thunder drums?”

His eyes didn’t move.

I tried again. “You used to say the sky was an orchestra. That thunder was percussion, and lightning was the conductor's baton.”

Still nothing.

I clenched my fists, angry at the air, at the storm, at everything. I stood and shouted, “I miss her too, okay?! But you’re still here—and I’m still here—and you can’t just disappear into the quiet!”

Lightning flared.

I didn’t wait for the thunder. I turned to leave, tears burning, when I heard something creak behind me.

The rocking chair had stopped.

I turned back. My father’s eyes were closed, his face pale, but his lips… they were moving.

“What?” I said, stepping closer.

He opened his eyes and looked at me—not through me. At me. “The thunder… used to come quicker,” he murmured, voice cracked like old wood.

I froze. “What?”

“When you were little,” he said, staring into the dark. “The storms were closer. Brighter. Now they just… pass through.”

A breath hitched in my throat. “You’re talking.”

He nodded slowly. “I didn’t know how to carry it. Her absence.”

“I know,” I whispered. “Me neither.”

Silence returned—but not the same kind. This silence wasn’t empty. It held weight, but not isolation. It was like the hush of snowfall, or the pause before a melody continues.

He reached out and held my hand. Lightning flashed once more, but we didn’t count this time. We waited. The thunder came, softer now, like a memory easing back into place.

We sat that way for hours, letting the storm wash the dust off the world.

The next day, he came into the kitchen and made breakfast. He even smiled once. He didn’t speak much, but he didn’t have to. Something had shifted.

In the days that followed, he began to tell stories again. Quietly, at first. Then with more warmth. He helped me plant a sapling in the garden, one my mother had planned to plant herself.

Years later, I would return to that house, older, changed, and find that tree tall and strong, its leaves whispering in the wind. And I would remember how healing began not with answers, but in the pause between pain and comfort—in the silence between lightning, where we found each other again.