The widower, only 65 years old and thus young for a man whose wife has died, paces from kitchen to living room to master bedroom to kitchen, again and again. The funeral is long over; the neighbors’ food is eaten; the dishes returned. Family members and close friends have gone home. He is alone in a house full of emptiness with his broken dreams of a happy retirement. Not even an echo of his wife’s laughter haunts this space. Only her absence haunts him; he is desolate.
The mother hangs up the towels in her daughter’s bathroom — clean for the first time in years, it seems. Only a week ago, she and her husband moved their daughter into her college dorm room. They shed no tears when they left her there because they believed it was time for her to begin her great adventure through life. When they returned home, they were too exhausted to notice the difference without her. But now, though the house is neater and the contents more in order, it is full of emptiness. The mother sighs and keenly feels the absence of her daughter as she settles the towels and turns off the lights.
The kindergartner wakes up from a long Saturday afternoon nap he took accidentally when his mother sent him back to his room after a morning of frustrating wants and demands. It is the quiet that awakens him, for he is used to a house full of the noise of his older brother and sister and his parents. Doors slamming, music playing, voices laughing, balls bouncing, water running — these are the sounds of his happy childhood. But this silence invading his home at dusk is something new for him. He walks from room to room, shouting, “Dad! Mom! Joe! Claire!” No one answers. How is he to know they are in the front yard looking at the neighbor’s new car? He only knows the absence of those he loves and, for the first time in
