Silence and solitude are painful reminders of loss. The house is silent in the wake of a partner’s death—his or her words no longer filling the air with conversation. Solitude becomes a prison sentence, an inescapable confinement that feels void of joy and warmth, filled with an absence where the shape of the beloved once moved and touched our lives. We, too, in the wake of this departure, feel absent and empty. Silence and solitude are imposed upon us, falling like ash around us, dulling the world and leaving all things we touch with the mark of our emptied hands.
