Exit narratives

For my grandmother,

We enter the room in silence and walk away in tears. These are gestures known to every mother from the moment of your birth to the seconds leading up to her passing. In days, many unspoken, she takes to her quiet ways; leaving each room a little cleaner, always certain of your return. Like the spaces between days, months, and years, you always do. You know this because of the way the tables are set when you arrive. They are just the way they were when you left. We say little beyond greetings; interspersed between little words, strewn across little days. Things are hushed that way, but it's home to all of us. From the cacophony of traffic to the chattering of keys over the low buzzing of your office workstation, the calm and quiet of a mother's warmth is the safest place you have in life.

You may not have said you loved her, you might not have said you cared, but as long as you knew where home was, her warmth would always be there.

Not wanting to wake you as you slept, worked, or ate, she left in the same silence she lived. With the warmth that followed her, we entered the room in silence to walk away in tears.