A Room Full of Silence

A Room Full of Silence

Throughout my life, I thought that I knew what loneliness was. I imagined loneliness as a sort of craving for human contact much like what you would get for a cold glass of whiskey after a long and brutal day at the office. It wasn’t until the day that I buried my Wife, and the silent wait spent sitting in the driver’s seat after saying goodbye to her for the last time, that I truly understood what loneliness was. It was not a craving, but the most painful hunger for something that you could never taste again, so instead the hunger eats away at you until there’s nothing left. There wasn’t anything in the whole world could satisfy it: only her.

I returned back to our home—my home—in absolute silence. I paced through the rooms which still carried her scent and laid on the bed we shared together. I continued to lay there for hours and waited for something to happen. Her voice still echoed in my mind as I replayed hundreds of little conversations that never seemed important at the time. The sunset through the window, smothering the room in a black shroud. I kept expecting to hear her calling to me to get out of bed and come downstairs for dinner, but it never came. So, I continued to lay there for hours, days, weeks; I could no longer keep track.

Slowly, the memory of her voice began to fade and bedsheets stopped smelling like her. I stared up at the empty white ceiling of the bedroom with eyes that had no more tears to give. I had become completely hollow. The silence of the house filled my mind, occasionally being broken by the sound of the telephone ringing or a knock at the door—neither of which I would ever answer. I hated the silence, but it was all that I had. There were no thoughts left in my head or feelings in my chest: all that was left was the silence that was slowly eating me piece by piece. The phone stopped ringing and the sun stopped rising, though the days kept creeping by.

One day, I could hear the front door open and footsteps make their way through the house. I could hear a voice calling out to me, but I did not answer. Finally, the familiar face of my Brother appeared in the doorway of my bedroom. I watched his expression turn to that of horror as he looked into the room, but I could not feel a thing. Before I knew it, there were all kinds of people in my bedroom. They were touching my things and breaking away at my precious silence. I wanted to scream, but all the breath had left my lungs. I could not move, even if I wanted to.

Then, they began taking everything away. They packed up all of my and my Wife’s things into cardboard boxes. I caught a glimpse of my Brother’s face as he was sorting through the framed pictures on the dresser. It was an expression I knew all too well—something was eating away at him too. He took one of the photographs out of its frame and slipped it into his pocket while he thought no-one was looking. I wanted to reach out to him, but the silence kept me pinned down. I wanted to feel again, but there wasn’t anything left of me to feel.

When every last piece was gone, they then took my bed from me. They pulled it out from under me and dragged it out of the room, but I stayed in place as I was. I was left floating there in the center of the bedroom. When the last of them finally made their way out of the freshly emptied home, the house was finally quiet again. As I looked around at the empty room, I struggled to remember the sound of my Wife’s voice. All of the memories of her were disappearing into the silence and I was sinking.

And then, through the silence, I could hear a voice. It was quiet at first, but it grew louder the more I listened. It felt like honey in my ears and all at once, a feeling of warmth flushed over me. The voice was calling for me, telling me to get out of bed because it was time for dinner. In the emptiness surrounding me, I sat up and stretched my arms with a deep yawn. My stomach rumbled and I realized just how hungry I was. I stepped down onto the bare hardwood floor and made my way out the bedroom door.

As I made my way down the stairs through the empty house, I noticed a familiar scent lingering in the air. The sun was pouring in through the windows and was filling each room with a warm glow. Photographs that once lined the walls were returning to their proper place and the old furniture began reappearing. Then, my home—our home—returned to how it once was. I was no longer hollow; my heart was full of the one that I loved. A smile stretched across my face in anticipation. It felt good to smile again. I couldn’t even remember what had happened to make me so sad to begin with.

As I turned the corner and walked into the dining room, I saw that the table had been laid out with a massive feast of all my favorite foods. My stomach growled at the sight of it. My eye continued down the long table at the figure standing at the end smiling back at me. Suddenly, I didn’t care about the food anymore. She was beautiful, she was perfect, and she was mine. I ran right past the table and pulled my Wife into my arms. I would no longer know the pain of loneliness because I would never again leave her side.

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