my father's silences, a partial catalogue

The silence at the dinner table when something was wrong but no one had named it yet. This silence lasted sometimes through the full meal and into the dishes. It had a texture: not hostile, not cold, more like weather. You moved through it and came out the other side. The silence when he was reading. Different from the dinner silence — inhabited, occupied, the silence of someone who has left the room without leaving the room. If you spoke to him he would answer, but from a distance. We learned to judge by the angle of his head whether he was available or not. The silence in the car. Long drives, family trips — my mother and I would talk and he would drive and occasionally add a word, but mostly he was just there, driving, and it was its own kind of company. The silence on the phone now, the brief pause before he responds that has gotten longer as he's gotten older. It used to alarm me. I used to fill it. Now I understand that the pause is where he's thinking, properly thinking, and rushing it doesn't help. There is the silence after the funerals we've attended. His father, his older brother, his closest friend from college in 2019. These silences are different. They have a weight I don't know how to describe. And there is a particular silence that I realize now was a form of love. The silence of a man sitting in the same room as you, not saying anything, not needing to say anything. The silence of being known well enough that presence is sufficient. I didn't understand that one until I was older. I miss it more than I expected to.