Hush
The sound of loss and the flicker that remains
The shrill ring of my phone splits the dark.
4:13 a.m.
A woman’s voice enters my ear:
“Your mother has died… She went in her sleep… Would you like to come see her… Her things are here…”
Her words dissolve into static.
I press end.
Silence fills the room.
Only Simba’s labored breathing moves inside it.
I rise, drifting down the stairs.
In the kitchen, I glance right and stop. A light flickers, a quiet rhythm inside the hush. I walk through the doorway into the sitting room.
Pulse.
Pulse.
Pulse.
Pulse.
My hand finds the switch on the wall. Off. Yet the ceiling light keeps blinking, steady as a heartbeat.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
The smoke detector joins in - a symphony of my mother’s death, playing just for me.
I sink onto the sofa, staring upward. Transfixed.
Before she died, I had asked her:
“Do you think you’ll find a way to reach me, once you’re gone?”
Now the answer flickers above me.
Pulse.
Beep.
Pulse.
Beep.
“And then there was just me,” I whisper to the house that raised me.
It had always been the three of us: my dad, my mom, and me.
MY parents. The ones who belonged to me.
Who loved me. Who worried for me. Who supported me. Who nagged me.
My constants.
Now both gone.
I wished for tears, but they too had left.
I sit in the silence. The house sits with me, holding its breath, as if it knows what was lost.
Pulse.
Beep.
Pulse.
Beep.
I know, without knowing how to name it, that something new is unfolding.
A life truly alone.
No one left to love me…in that way.
The light keeps flickering, steady.
Her way of keeping her promise.
A happy birthday wish to me, just one day early.
✨ Author’s Note: What you’ve just read is about the night my mother died. The hospital called at 4:13 a.m. The next day was 3/14, my birthday.
I can’t shake the mirror of those numbers. It felt like her last way of reminding me that even in death, she is stitched into my beginning.




The eternal energy of loved ones passed is always available. My Grandma still sends the scent of roses.🌹
Wow. This was a profound post.