Eight months after losing my wife of 43 years, I thought the worst the quiet could do was keep me company—until a freezing Thursday in a Walmart parking lot, when I gave my winter coat to a shivering young mother and her baby. I figured I’d never see them again.
Not peaceful quiet, but the kind that settles into your bones and makes the refrigerator hum sound like a fire alarm.For 43 years, it was just us.Morning coffee at the wobbly kitchen table. Her humming while she folded laundry. Her hand finding mine in church, squeezing once when the pastor said something she liked, twice when she was bored.
