When you grow up so close to death, you know that it can be many different things to many different people, but that for a parent, death, more than anything else, is silence. In the kitchen, in the hall, on the phone, in the backseat, on Friday evening, on Monday morning, wrapped in pillowcases and crumpled sheets, at the bottom of the toy box in the attic, on the little stool by the kitchen counter, under damp towels that no longer lie strewn across the floor beside the bath. Everywhere, children leave silence behind them.
