My wife, Jenna, died two years ago.
Cancer.
The kind that doesn’t give you time to understand what’s happening. One moment we were arguing about whether the kitchen cabinets should be white or blue. Six months later I was sitting beside a hospital bed at two in the morning, holding her hand while machines kept beeping in the dark.
I kept thinking the doctors would come back in and say they made a mistake.
They never did.
After the funeral the house felt wrong. Like everything inside it had been paused mid-sentence.
Her coffee mug still sat near the sink.
Her grocery list was still stuck to the fridge with a magnet.
Even the air carried the faint smell of the vanilla candles she used to burn every evening.
I didn’t have the luxury of falling apart.
Because there was Melissa.
She was only four when Jenna died. Now she’s six. Bright, curious, and strangely calm in the way children sometimes become when life forces them to grow up a little too soon.
Some days she laughs exactly like her mother.
On those days I have to turn away for a second just to breathe.
Since Jenna passed, it’s been just the two of us.
I work repairing HVAC systems. It’s honest work, but the pay doesn’t stretch very far. Some months I manage to stay ahead of the bills. Other months it feels like playing financial whack-a-mole.
You knock one down.
Another pops up.
Melissa never complains about any of it.
One afternoon she burst through the front door after school, backpack bouncing behind her.
“Daddy! Guess what!”
I had just come home from a job and was halfway through pulling off my work boots.
“What happened?”
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