I didn’t expect the grief to return so violently. I thought time had sealed that wound. But loss has a way of reopening doors you thought were locked forever.
A few days after his funeral, there was a knock at my door.
It was his second wife.
She looked exhausted, older than I remembered, holding a chipped teacup like it was the only thing keeping her steady. She didn’t waste time on pleasantries. She simply said, “There’s something you deserve to know.”
She told me about a lake.
A place I had forgotten—but Sam never had.
On the night our son died, he drove there alone. It was where he used to take our boy—just the two of them. A quiet stretch of water surrounded by trees, where they talked when words felt necessary and sat in silence when they didn’t. Where stones were skipped and memories were made without noise.
She told me Sam went there often. Sometimes weekly. Sometimes daily.
He never spoke about it.
And in that moment, I finally understood: the man I thought was made of stone had been drowning quietly all along—loving, mourning, and breaking in a language I never learned how to hear.
That night, he brought flowers. He sat by the water and talked to our son until sunrise. Then, he cried—gut-wrenching, full-body sobs—but never once in front of me.
“He didn’t want you to see him broken,” she said, her own tears falling now. “He thought staying strong was how he could carry you both.”
Later that evening, I went to the lake. I didn’t know what I was looking for—maybe just a way to feel close to them both again. What I found was a small wooden box, weathered but intact, tucked beneath a tree near the water’s edge.
Inside: letters. Dozens of them.
For Complete Cooking STEPS Please Head On Over To Next Page Or Open button (>) and don’t forget to SHARE with your Facebook friends.
