R.I.P. (Rest in Pieces)

My feet don’t touch the ground, but I’m rushing—running, running toward... someone? The memory slips, watery and sideways.

Thunder cracks.

Tires shriek.

Rain smears everything with shimmering lines.

My hands—are these my hands?—reach out for something solid. Shouting echoes, garbled, like voices pressed behind thick glass.

Am I inside? Out in the street? Sinking below the surface? All I know is motion, cold, and confusion.

The front door glows in the storm. Maybe I’ve made it home, maybe not. I reach for the doorknob, but my fingers pass right through. Anna’s voice calls from somewhere—maybe it’s her, maybe it’s just the radio. A shadow creeps through the hallway, overlapping with rain. Everything blurs. Am I falling? I don’t feel the ground at all. Light streaks sideways through the windows, bleeding into each trembling corner. I try to shout, but my voice doesn’t catch, doesn’t matter. Dreaming? Living? Already gone? Colors twist. Time jumps, clumsy. Static and laughter tangle. I think I touch Anna’s hair, but it’s only memory. The whole world shudders, and I’m nowhere, everywhere at once, swimming toward the surface I can't reach.

It’s a dark and stormy night. I don’t even know I’m dead yet.

Headlights flare. The world splinters, glass snapping, then silence. That’s when time folds. Suddenly I’m above everything, looking down, gravity dissolving. I sprint home, rain passing straight through me. I grab for the doorknob, but my hand is already air; the porchlight burns through my outline. Inside, Anna’s voice is muffled. Jack asks if Daddy’s coming back soon. My chest aches with the need to answer. I yell, “I’m here! I’m right here!” But I’m nothing but static, just a wisp, a bad signal. Hours slip, maybe days. Time softens, sloshes around. Anna moves slow through grief—a fog I can’t clear for her. I reach to tuck her hair behind her ear. My hand is just cold. She shivers, looks up sharply, then goes back to her tea. Jack grows taller in fast-forward, kindergarten scrawls piling up, then vanishing. Locker doors slam in middle school; I float nearby, unseen. At graduation, his shoulders are broad, and pride fills me like an ache. Their smiles are all I have. Some days, I’m only a flicker just out of sight.

Light seeps through new curtains. I drift through rooms that used to be mine, silent and breathless. Every morning I wait—maybe today she’ll sense me, leaning over her shoulder. Anna’s hair is grey now. She sits by the window, eyes searching the old street, hoping for something nameless. Sometimes, right before she sleeps, she whispers my name to the dark. When I try to kiss her forehead, there’s just a brush of cold air. She flinches, tucks the blanket closer, sighs. Jack visits less and less after college. When he’s home, he stands in the kitchen, studying old stains—juice that never faded, scuffs from tiny shoes. He runs his hand over the counter, face tight with memory. I wish I could hug him, tell him it’s okay to miss me, that it’s okay to feel lost sometimes. Anna keeps talking to the walls as she makes tea, telling me stories about her day and the neighbor’s sunflowers, about the afternoons so quiet even the fridge hum hurts. I listen, always a breath away, wishing she’d turn and notice. But she never does. The house swallows her shadow each night, and all I can measure is heartbeats on the stairs, footsteps that grow softer with every year.

Later, Anna’s steps slow to shuffles. Then one day, she sits and doesn’t stand up again. Jack arrives to clean up, packing away what’s left—photos, scarves, my wedding ring. I watch him as he pulls on an old sweatshirt of mine, just for a moment, and his reflection almost looks like me again. He touches the window and whispers, “I hope you’re proud of me, Dad.” I answer in the only way I can, with a curl of air, a shifting curtain. If I could, I’d shout it—how much I love them. How I see every struggle, every victory. Time keeps loosening its grip. The house fills with new laughter—Jack’s kids running crazy through the halls. They don’t see me. To them, I’m a faded story, an old chair collecting dust. I try to hang on, listen to their joy, but sometimes the loneliness creeps in—a longing for what moves on without me. Nights and seasons pass. Anna’s garden goes wild. Jack’s hair is silver. Paint covers the handprints Jack and I left. Even the dust seems to forget me now. One morning, nothing feels familiar. I try to measure the loss, count the days since everything changed, since voices grew quiet and rooms grew empty. Will even the walls forget I was here? If I let go, what remains?

A new family brings the house back to life. I settle in a corner, wishing for one more touch, a whisper, anything that says I mattered. Sometimes, on stormy nights, a child pauses on the staircase, looks straight through me. For a second, I believe they know I’m here. For a second, I hope that love leaves a mark, even after memory fades. But hope, too, thins with time. I become the shadow that love won’t abandon and grief won’t erase, hovering not from anger, but from how fiercely I once cared.

Doors slam, feet run up the stairs, laughter shivers along the floorboards; it's not Anna and Jack anymore, but a whirlwind of new voices, a surge of life that startles even the ghosts. I watch the new children race down the same halls, chasing one another through the afternoon light. They don’t see me, even when they pause in a doorway, squinting as if they feel a chill. Sometimes, on wild nights when rain hammers the roof and thunder rattles the bones of the house, I almost imagine I could reach out and steady them, tell them they're safe. But my hands are woven through with dusk, and my words fall away like dust.

There's comfort, sometimes, in simply witnessing—the way the house adapts, endures, wraps itself around every family that calls it home. I’ve learned to look for small blessings: a child’s crayon sun on fresh wallpaper, a pan of cinnamon rolls eaten right from the oven, a new mother humming softly to herself in the kitchen, as if the house is listening and holding its breath. I stay for these moments, clutching them like river stones, finding purpose simply in remembering them.

They're gone.

But.

I'm still here.

I guess I just left the rest...

in pieces.