The Things We Never Said

“Are you seriously going to leave all this stuff here forever?” My sister, Lauren, was standing in the doorway of our dad’s garage, holding a cardboard box. I didn't answer her. I was too busy looking at the old wooden workbench where Dad used to spend his Saturday mornings fixing things that weren't even broken. It had been eight months since he died, and we still hadn't figured out what to do with his things. I'm Nathan Miller, 29, from Cleveland, Ohio. I live about twenty minutes from the house where I grew up. My mom, Diane, still lives there, but she's been talking about moving into a smaller place. The house has become too difficult for her to manage alone, especially now that Dad is gone. I know she's right. I just can't seem to accept it. Dad died unexpectedly last February. He was 61. One day, he was calling me to ask why I hadn't changed the oil in my car, and the next, my mom was calling me from the hospital, barely able to speak through her tears. I remember driving there with both hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers hurt. I kept telling myself that everything would be okay because I wasn't ready for anything else to happen. But when I arrived, a doctor came out and told us there was nothing more they could do. I don't remember much after that. I remember my mom crying in the hallway. I remember Lauren holding her. And I remember standing there, feeling completely useless, wishing someone would tell me this was all a mistake. Dad and I weren't exactly the kind of father and son who talked about our feelings. We loved each other, but we weren't good at saying it. Our conversations were usually about sports, car repairs, the weather, or whether I was eating properly. Whenever I tried to talk about something serious, he would make a joke or tell me not to overthink things. Sometimes I got frustrated with him. I wanted him to understand me without having to explain everything. Now I would give anything to sit across from him at the kitchen table and listen to one of his terrible jokes. The worst part is that our last conversation wasn't even a good one. I had promised to visit him the weekend before he died, but I canceled because I was tired and wanted to stay home. He said it was fine, then joked that I'd probably forgotten how to drive to my own parents' house. I laughed and told him I'd come next weekend. There was no next weekend. For months, that conversation kept playing in my head. I knew it wasn't my fault, but guilt doesn't always listen to reason. A few weeks ago, my mom asked me to help her sort through the garage. Lauren had already started packing things, but every time she picked something up, I found a reason to keep it. Dad's old fishing rods. His broken radio. A box of screws he had collected over twenty years. I wanted to keep everything, as if getting rid of any of it would mean losing another piece of him. Lauren finally put the box down and sat beside me. “Nathan, Mom can't stay in this house just because we're scared to let it go,” she said quietly. I wanted to argue, but I couldn't. She was hurting too. She had just found a different way of dealing with it. We sat there for a while without talking. Then she picked up Dad's old baseball cap and started crying. I'd barely ever seen my sister cry, and suddenly I realized that while I'd been busy dealing with my own grief, I'd forgotten that she had lost the same person I had. I put my arm around her, and we stayed like that until Mom called us inside for dinner. That evening, I took the baseball cap home with me. It's sitting on a shelf in my apartment now, right beside a framed picture of the three of us at a lake when I was twelve. Sometimes I look at it and remember how Dad used to pretend he couldn't swim just to make us laugh. I'm slowly learning that moving forward doesn't mean forgetting him. My mom deserves to enjoy her life again, Lauren deserves to grieve in her own way, and maybe I deserve to stop punishing myself for a weekend I can't get back. Still, there are nights when I pick up my phone to call Dad before remembering I can't. And every time that happens, I have to learn how to live with the silence all over again.