What a nine-year-old made from his mother’s sweaters, and what it cost to keep it whole.
Ihave lived long enough to know that grief does not leave a house when a person does. It does not follow the casket out the door or dissolve in the weeks after the funeral when the food stops arriving and the sympathy cards stop coming and everyone who visited goes back to their own lives and expects yours to do the same. It settles in. It finds a corner and occupies it quietly, and there are mornings when you walk into a room and feel it before you understand what you are feeling, a weight that has no visible source, an alteration in the quality of the air. My name is Ruth. I have watched grief move through this house for two years now, and most of what I have learned about it I have learned from my grandson Liam, who is nine years old and understands things about loss that most adults spend a lifetime trying to articulate and never quite manage.
