The Silence

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      The sky greeted her today adorning a sleet grey gown that smothered her world. The gentle, warm wind dancing around her was all wrong this time. It didn't carry the roaring laughter from the house or the homely aroma of the baked dinners. Instead she only hears slight murmurs of grieving voices, finding her like feathers floating in the wind.

The one story cottage stood slouching and sagging at the top of an impossible hill. The cobalt blue roof shingles, once bright and welcoming, now look distorted and dull like a picture of a picture. The discoloured white paint that is plastered on the walls of the house has begun to peel and crack like the people within them. Her eyes are drawn to the frangipani tree that only last month was like natures Christmas tree; engulfed in fragrant blossoming flowers, and vibrant leaves that beckoned her forward towards the front door. 

Today however, the tree wore the same expressions as the house; wilting flowers lay littered on ground exuding a deadly earthy stench, and the leaves were no longer welcoming; instead they seem defeated, shrivelled and shrunk donning different shades of lifeless browns and falling to create a blanket of leaf litter at her feet.

She falters stepping towards the door and can't bring herself to reach a little further to touch the shining brass doorhandle that she had turned without a care so many times before. This time, she fears that if she turns the handle all the things she has been refusing to believe will come tumbling down on top of her. Drowning her in her own thoughts.

The first step was the worst. It didn't get particularly easier from that point but she was less focused on who wasn't there after that, and more focused on what little was. The towering boxes created a cardboard city in the eerily empty lounge room. All the furniture had already made it to the new home, even his eccentric favourite chair. The rest of her family conversed in hushed whispers as if they didn't want to disturb the tired, old home, any more than they already had. She catches a glimpse of a gentle hand outstretched to comfort her sobbing grandmother who was now grieving for two; a husband and a house.

She traces the pencil etches in the wall where her grandfather had insisted that they record their heights, feeling the indents brush over her fingertips. The memory of his booming, happy voice and ever-present smile makes her vision blur with warm watery tears.

The irony was, his face was the one that could always make her laugh, now it felt like he was fading away from her like a dream she tried grasping but would always slip through her fingers. His sudden absence shook the world so violently that it seemed even the house noticed. The air is peppered with dust and doesn't hold the same pleasant warmth as it once did.

The home is empty. Not the house.

The house was still filled with knick-knacks yet to be packed and a mattress her grandmother still slept on. The house still had a kitchen, a toilet and a shower but the home that once existed was long gone.  The constant hum of music from another era was nowhere to be heard, and the parade of friendly faces all of whom, would turn up for his epic Saturday night gatherings and eventually became known to her as an Uncle or an Auntie were nowhere to be seen. Now those same faces wear only wearing the scars the ugly thief of death left them with.

The silence was deafening.