Sacrosanct Silence

For my wife: my delight, my greatest passion, and the wellspring of all that inspires me.

—

…There's a distinct sort of quiet that looms over the aftermath of tragedy. I've not been so expressly privy to such calamities in the past, I'm afraid the phenomenon is quite new of an experience for me. But my father knew of such things, even if he hadn't quite spoken so frequently of them in his lifetime.

He believed, as God is in all things, that it is his mournful silence. I believe that may have been father’s way of processing the sort of things he'd seen in his service to the king. A soldier's comfort, perhaps.

The very land itself almost holds its breath on behalf of the women who roam about it—the wives, daughters, the mothers.

Until one eventually finds what each searches for but dreads to locate, and the sacrosanct silence is partially broken for the rest of them, who quietly find relief that it was not theirs.

For every woman’s wailing means one less of the vacant stares that could yet still belong to them; one greater hope that this might all be for naught and their son, their father, or their most beloved of all might only had taken too long in arriving home and are simply waiting there for them.

I remember having prayed that God might forgive me for having these selfish thoughts. I remember praying for a lot of things that day as I had not known that I had been holding my breath until it was stolen away from me.

…But some prayers go unanswered just as commonly as ones are heeded. Even by the end of it all, looking back upon my own in this moment, I still know not which category mine fell under…or if they had, indeed, been heard at all.

The story I tell begins with a prayer for mercy and profound miracle, though one could hardly receive blame for if they believe it not answered so.

…Because this is the story of the day my beloved died.