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THE HOUSE WAS QUIETER THAN I had ever known. Still, it wasn’t the eerie stillness we had experienced in the days following Gregor’s final breath. This silence was different—softer, like a pause between breaths. The air felt lighter, as if it had been relieved of a burden we couldn’t identify. Yet beneath that calm was an unease—an unspoken understanding that this stillness was not peace but an anxious waiting for something we weren’t sure we were ready to face.
Once alive with the tension of our unspoken fears and grief, the walls now exhaled a slow sigh. The house had shed its oppressive weight, only to reveal how empty we were inside. The past hung in the air like dust that refused to settle.
Father’s voice broke through the quiet the morning after Gregor’s burial, colder than the autumn air creeping in through the open window. “It needs to be done,” he spoke. There was no room for softness, no hesitation. He didn’t glance at Mother or me. Like any other, it was a simple declaration, a task. The words landed in the space between us, echoing in the hollow silence that now filled our home.
Mother, with her hands twisted around the ever-present handkerchief, nodded faintly. Her face was pale, as though the grief had sucked all the color from her. Her eyes, once sharp with concern, were now lost in some distant fog, unable to look at either of us for too long.
I wanted to say something, to stop this madness, to preserve what little of Gregor remained. But my throat was tight, my heart a lump of sorrow that lodged itself too deeply for words. So, I stayed silent. I didn’t object.
We couldn’t keep his room like this, living in the suspended state it represented. The room had become a tomb, the last relic of a life we had watched wither away. Still, even the thought of stepping inside, of dismantling what was left of Gregor’s life, felt like a betrayal. I was torn between the need to move forward and the fear of losing the last physical connection to Gregor. It was a battle I wasn’t sure I was ready to fight.
The room had once been filled with the essence of Gregor—the quiet hum of his life, routines, and dreams.
But we all knew we had to face it to move forward, so we began.
Without waiting for any further discussion, Father entered Gregor’s room. His hands were steady as he opened the windows swiftly, dragging the furniture out one piece at a time. It wasn’t just cleaning. It was erasure. His movements were fast and mechanical, as if eradicating the physical remnants of Gregor’s life would somehow cleanse the air of the years of neglect and resentment. He worked in a blur, eyes set forward, shoulders rigid.
Mother stayed in the hallway, her face pale, her body as frail as a bird’s wing. She peeked inside now and then, but she didn’t enter. She didn’t offer to help, and I couldn’t tell if she was too exhausted to lift a finger or if it was simply too much to bear. The life that had once thrived between these walls was slipping away, and she was retreating with it.
And for me? I was frozen in the doorway, heart heavy with a grief that seemed to engulf us all. I watched as Father dumped everything Gregor had left behind in the center of the room: clothes, books, papers, each one a small fragment of him, a part of the person he had been before everything collapsed. The room had once been filled with the essence of Gregor—the quiet hum of his life, routines, and dreams. But now, it was nothing more than a hollow shell, a stark reminder of our collective loss.
His faint smell lingered in the air—sweat mixed with the must of the final days, a stench that clenched my chest. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I could walk away. Let Father handle it. Let him erase what he couldn’t bear to remember. But something pulled me forward. My gaze shifted to the desk in the corner, the same desk where Gregor had spent countless nights hunched over his work, his tired eyes scanning numbers that meant nothing to him but everything to the family he supported.
I couldn’t leave. Not yet.
I stepped inside, each movement slow and deliberate, my hands shaking as I began sorting through the piles of Gregor’s life. I folded shirts mechanically, stacked books without thinking, and set papers aside with numbness that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside me. The rhythmic motion of my hands should’ve felt soothing, but it didn’t. Each object I touched reminded me of what we had lost, Gregor’s sacrifices, and the life he had given away for our sake.
Among the books, I found one of Gregor’s old notebooks. It was filled with numbers—client lists, schedules, scribbled notes in his precise handwriting. His job, which had drained and consumed him until he was a shell of himself, was recorded in those pages. I could almost see him sitting at this desk late into the night, eyes bleary, shoulders tense, desperately trying to keep us afloat and meet the expectations thrust upon him.
The weight of his sacrifice crushed me anew. Gregor had given everything to this family, had poured his soul into a job that never gave back, that had only been taken from him. And we had let him. We had let him because we didn’t know how to do anything else. The enormity of our loss, of his sacrifice, was a burden we could never fully comprehend.
The weight of that realization made my heart feel like it was sinking.
By midday, the room was nearly bare. Father had removed most of the furniture, muttering about selling it. There was no mourning, no hesitation—just a cold practicality, as if getting rid of these things would erase the part of Gregor that had once belonged to us. The bed, the wardrobe, the desk—gone. The room, now stripped of its history, was unrecognizable. It was like walking into a place that had never held any life.
Gregor had given everything to this family, had poured his soul into a job that never gave back, that had only been taken from him.
Only one pile remained in the corner—the drawings. Gregor’s sketches of us, of his distorted vision of our family. His angry, desperate renditions of the people who had consumed him. I paused, my fingers hovering over the rough edges of the papers, unsure whether to hold onto them or let them go.
Part of me wanted to keep them, to preserve this fragment of him, but I knew deep down that Gregor wouldn’t want that. He wouldn’t want us to hold onto his pain, his fractured view of our family. He had given everything to protect us from the world outside, from the things we couldn’t understand, and in doing so, he had lost himself.
With trembling hands, I packed the drawings away, placing them in a box to be forgotten. I closed the lid gently, a quiet farewell to the pieces of my brother that I would never truly understand.
The room was empty now, its bare walls exposed to the world, and I could hardly recognize it. It was as though it had never been Gregor’s at all. The finality of the room’s transformation was a stark reminder of the irrevocable changes in our lives.
Father stood in the doorway, expression unreadable. “We’ll use it for storage,” he said flatly, as though discussing a broken chair or an unused cupboard. There was no acknowledgment, sorrow, or memory of what had once filled this space.
Mother didn’t speak. She stared at the empty room, eyes distant. She didn’t protest. She didn’t even look at Father. There was nothing left to say, and I knew that. In her silence, I found a strange sense of acceptance, a resignation to the changes that had befallen us.
I lingered momentarily, my gaze sweeping the room one last time. It was hard to believe that this space had once been filled with life. With Gregor. With his presence.
That evening, after the house had fallen into its hollow quiet again, I sat alone in my room. The violin rested in my lap, its weight familiar, grounding me as the rest of the world seemed to drift away.
I pondered Gregor’s life and the sacrifices he had made. The vacant room urged us to progress and release our hold. In the hush of the night, I questioned whether we were capable of this transition, of letting go of the past and embracing the future.
Packing away Gregor’s past didn’t mean forgetting. It was a deliberate act of letting go, a necessary step in making space for something new, for something still to come.
I lifted the bow to the strings, and the first note broke the silence. It was soft and unsure, but it grew bolder and louder. It filled the room with sound, spilling through the cracks in the house. The music wasn’t just a lament—it was a promise—a promise to remember and move forward.
Packing away Gregor’s past didn’t mean forgetting. It was a deliberate act of letting go, a necessary step in making space for something new, for something still to come. It was a bittersweet acknowledgment that life, in its relentless march, was waiting beyond the shadows.
As the last note faded into the silence, I knew this was the moment to step into the life waiting beyond the shadows. It was a moment filled with hope, a promise of a future that we could shape, a future that held the echoes of Gregor’s memory.
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