Eight months after losing my wife of forty-three years, I believed the worst the quiet could do was echo through the rooms we once filled together. At seventy-three, the days had become routines built from memory—two cups of coffee though only one was needed, the hum of the refrigerator suddenly loud enough to feel like company. Ellen used to say, “It’s you and me against the world, Harold,” and for decades that was enough. But grief has a way of stretching time, making empty chairs feel like open wounds. On a bitter Thursday afternoon,…CONTINUE READING IN BELOW