The Grieved

It’s fascinating how families can maintain their mythology, how they rewrite history through selected photographs and curated anecdotes. James’ family excelled at this. When Uncle’s gloom grew too obvious, he became a creative. When Grandmother’s confusion passed into malice, it was her age. Reality is malleable in families.

Standing in his childhood living room, musty with disuse, James could see this process unfold again. The wall that had once displayed a chronological gallery of family photos now contained a conspicuous gap. Pictures from his childhood remained, as did recent photos of his parents and sister. But images from a specific one-year period—roughly 2023 to 2024—had vanished.

"What happened to the photos that were here?" he asked, referencing the empty space.

Mum glanced up from her chrysanthemums, a brief flash of panic crossing her face before it settled into practiced neutrality. "I'm reorganising. You know how I get about these things."

"You've been 'reorganising' for months now."

"Well, it's a big project." She clipped a stem with unnecessary force. "Some photos are harder to look at than others."

"Which ones?"

She snipped a stem too close, ruining the bloom. "You know which ones."

But he didn't. That was the maddening part—everyone around him seemed to share an understanding that excluded him.

It began with something so ordinary that, for weeks, James couldn't be certain anything was happening at all. His mother ended phone calls more abruptly than usual. His sister Kate asked, with an odd emphasis, if he was "still feeling right". There was a slight hesitation in his husband’s voice when introducing him to a new colleague. Each instance too minor to mention, too insignificant to warrant concern. Yet collectively they formed a pattern that, once perceived, became impossible to unsee.

On a Tuesday morning in October, James stood at the bathroom sink brushing his teeth. Michael entered, nodded vaguely in his direction, and began sorting through the cabinet. It was nothing, this interaction—thousands of mornings just like this one. Except that when Michael closed the mirrored cabinet door, he flinched at their shared reflection. It was subtle. Anyone else might have missed it. But James had been watching for these moments, collecting them like evidence of something he couldn't yet name.

"Did you schedule that dinner with the Howards?" James asked, his voice deliberately casual.

Michael stared at the drain. "I cancelled it."

"Why?”

"They're expecting a certain dynamic." Michael chose each word with visible effort. "I think it's better if we wait."

"Wait for what?"

Michael squeezed toothpaste onto his brush with excessive concentration. "For things to settle."

James rinsed his mouth, watching his husband avoid his gaze. “What things need settling?” Their life was the most stable it had been in years. James's new medication had finally regulated his previously sullen moods. His promotion meant financial security after years of precarity. Michael's therapy had helped him work through the grief of losing his father. By any rational measure, they were thriving. Yet here was Michael, behaving as if they were in the midst of some ongoing catastrophe.

"You're doing it again," James said.

"Doing what?"

"Acting like I'm not here."

Michael looked startled, then guilty. "That's absurd."

James dried his face on a towel. "Is it?"

But Michael had already turned away, conversation terminated, and James felt that familiar tightness on his chest. It wasn’t dramatic, what was happening. It was almost nothing. A thinning of air. A polite distance. It reminded James of the weeks after his father-in-law's funeral, when people had stopped asking how he was but still looked at him a second too long. As if grief had left a residue on his skin. He had walked around the world stained, unacknowledged but visible.

That afternoon, he opened the mailbox and found a cream-coloured envelope, heavy cardstock, no return address. Inside was a folded card with a generic message;

With deepest sympathy. Thinking of you in this difficult time.

No name, no indication of who the note referred to. He flipped it over. Blank. No handwriting beyond the pre-printed text. He examined the envelope again. It wasn’t postmarked. Hand delivered?

He left the card on the counter beside the fruit bowl. Stared at it while drinking a lukewarm coffee. He couldn’t ask Michael about it, what if he’d overlooked something serious? A car accident? Cancer? Suicide?

He texted Kate. Hey, all good with you? Been thinking about Grandma lately. It was a coward’s message, vague enough to invite disclosure without revealing ignorance. She responded hours later: Fine here. Saw her Monday x

The internet was no help. No recent deaths in the extended family, no tragedies among old friends, no posts from colleagues. He searched obituaries. Nothing. He started calling people—former coworkers, his old piano teacher, even a classmate he hadn’t spoken to in a decade. All still alive. Some were confused by his tone, others seemed almost guarded. But no one mentioned a death. Or rather, no one acknowledged that a death had occurred, while behaving with the kind of restraint that implied exactly that. In the morning, the card was gone.

“Did you move the sympathy card?” he asked Michael, keeping his voice casual.

Michael frowned, pouring cereal. “What card?”

“There was a card on the counter yesterday. Cream envelope. Sympathy message.”

“I didn’t see anything.”

He went to the local florist after lunch. Something in him, instinct or muscle memory, felt it right. He browsed for a while, not sure what he was looking for. The woman behind the counter had a soft, almost maternal look.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” she said gently, handing him a receipt. The register beeped, and another customer arrived. The moment passed.

James didn’t mention the card again. It felt dangerous to. Instead, he said things like, We should visit your mother, or How are your cousins? and watched Michael for micro-responses, ticks of the eye, slight tensions around the jaw. Nothing obvious ever came. Only this steady attenuation. They still shared a bed, but even there James noticed an unconscious distance Michael had begun to put between them. The next shift came quietly, in the form of an email.

Subject: Planning The Memorial.

No greeting. No mention of who it was from. Just a block of text about catering, flowers, and “keeping things respectful for the sake of the family”. No name of the deceased. No date.

At first he assumed it was spam. Then he saw it had been sent to a thread he was part of—one that included his sister, mother, father, and others he didn’t know. He called Kate. She didn’t answer. James scrolled through the thread, carefully. One of the older messages referred to the ceremony, but not where or for whom. There was a mention of childhood photos and closure, and an attached file he couldn't open.

Later that week, his mother invited him to lunch. She didn’t use the word invite, though. She said, If you’re free. James arrived to find the dining table already full. His sister, mother, father, others he didn’t recognise, and no place set for him.

“James,” said Dad, his smile thinning with effort. “You made it.”

He stood awkwardly by the sideboard, waiting for him to offer a chair. He didn’t. Kate stood and fetched one, unfolding it at the end of the table like an afterthought. “Sit.” she said, too brightly. The conversation was already underway. Someone was recounting a memory of a beach holiday, how someone had fallen off a paddleboard and lost their glasses. Everyone laughed. James searched his memory. He’d been on that holiday. He was the one who fell. But in their version, no one mentioned him. He was excised neatly, like a strip of tape pulled from a recording. He tried to join in, he asked Kate how work was going. She smiled, paused, then turned to speak to someone else. No one asked him a question the entire lunch.

As the guests began clearing, his mother took him aside. “I’m glad you came.” she said. He looked at her. Her face was the same, soft and pinched.

“Can I ask something?” he said.

She hesitated.

“Who died?”

She exhaled slowly. “We’re having a nice time. Don’t ruin it.” He left before dessert.

Back at home, Michael was reading on the couch. He didn’t look up when James entered. “Good lunch?”

“They were talking about a holiday we went on. Except I wasn’t in the story.”

Michael didn’t answer. He turned a page. Not because he was engrossed, James thought, but because it was easier than acknowledging the strangeness.

“I think they think someone’s died.” James said.

Still nothing. James crossed the room and took the book from his hands.

“Has someone died?”

Michael looked up at him, blankly. Then, “I think they need time.”

“From what?”

Michael didn’t speak. Just stood, quietly, and went to the kitchen. James read the cover. It was a memoir. The kind where someone Finds Meaning Through Grief, Solitude, The Passage of Time.

The next morning, a framed photo disappeared from the bookshelf. It had been there for years—James at twenty-five, standing beside Kate at her wedding. His hair had been longer then, his face softer. He noticed its absence while dusting, his hand reaching for the frame out of habit, only to touch air. He checked the drawer where they kept old photo albums. The whole year was gone. He confronted Michael.

“There was a picture here. From Kate’s wedding.”

Michael frowned. “Are you sure?”

“You were the one who took it.”

“I don’t remember.”

Liar.

Later that day, he received a text from a friend he hadn’t spoken to in over a year. Hey. I heard what happened. Hope you're holding up okay. Let me know if you ever want to talk. He stared at it for several minutes before typing: What exactly did you hear?

Read. No reply.

That night, he opened his laptop and created a new folder. He began uploading files: scans of old letters, photos of himself with family, screenshots of messages where people had addressed him by name. By the end of the night, the folder contained eighty-two files.

He wasn’t sure who the proof was for. Himself, maybe. Or some future version of him who would need to remember that he had, in fact, existed. When he finished, he renamed the folder: James M. (1992–

He stopped. Stared at the dash. Then closed the laptop.

The next week passed in silence. He stopped asking Michael questions. Instead, he listened to the way his name was used less often, to the way people’s eyes passed over him. Conversations continued in rooms he was in, but without him in them. He began to write everything down. Not thoughts, not feelings. Just facts.

Tuesday: Kate cancelled plans, said she was "not up for it" in her tone reserved for discussing tragedy.

Wednesday: Another condolence card slipped into the doorframe. No envelope. No handwriting.

Friday: Bank statement arrived. Account still active. But a withdrawal made that I don’t recognise. For a bouquet.

On Sunday, he decided to go to his mother’s church. It was a modest red-brick building with pressed-tin ceilings and stiff-backed pews. Mum had never been especially religious, but the church offered routine, and routine was one of the last things she still believed in.

He arrived just before the service. Sat near the back. No one came to him. He scanned the printed bulletin. At the bottom of the back page, beneath announcements and raffle results, was a single line: In memory of our beloved, lost too soon. No specific name. He approached the pastor afterward, a man he hadn’t spoken to in years.

“Father Matthew?”

The man looked at him with a peculiar expression, recognition filtered through something like bewilderment.

“Hello.” he said, carefully.

“I saw the notice in the bulletin.”

“Yes, well.” The pastor folded his hands. “A hard time for everyone.”

“Who was it for?”

The pastor blinked slowly. “I think you know.”

James waited. But nothing followed. No clarification. Just the silence of a man performing emotional triage.

When he got home, Michael wasn’t there. James walked through the house, quietly, as if he were inspecting a museum of himself. In the bedroom, his clothes had been rearranged. The drawer where he kept his old journals was empty. That night, Michael didn’t come home at all. James didn’t call. He sat with the quiet. At some point, he began walking. No coat, no bag. He let the night pull him along. It was only when he found himself at the cemetery fence that he understood where he was going. He hadn’t been here before. The place was nice—tidy, symmetrical.

He didn’t have to look for it. The grave was near the east wall. Fresh stone. Fresh flowers. He stood in front of it and read the inscription. It was a name he recognised. A name he hadn’t heard in years. A name he no longer used. Born 1992. Died 2024. Nothing else. No epitaph. Just a full stop.

He crouched down and touched the stone. It was smooth, impersonal. As if someone had made a decision about how he would be remembered, and had filed it with the rest of the paperwork. He stood there for a while. The air was sharp. Somewhere a car passed, far off, indifferent. He looked around. Then he walked the perimeter until he found the toolshed. It wasn’t locked. He returned with a spade.

The digging started quietly. The soil was loose, recently turned. It gave easily at first. But the effort became harder as he went. Clay, stones, the weight of everything that had been placed here to hold her in.

The first foot was disbelief. The second, anger. By the third, his breath came in sharp bursts. The spade caught on a root, pulled the shaft out of its socket. His palms blistered. He didn’t stop. He wanted to find it—the box, the coffin, the final gesture. He kept digging.

Four feet.

Five.

His foot slipped, knocking dirt down the side. He climbed in, boots squelching. He clawed at the bottom with his hands now. Nails packed with earth. His coat torn. And then—Nothing. He knelt, panting. There was no coffin. No body. Just a hollow pit, carved in his and her shape, and left empty. He stood in it, and laughed, short and bitter.

Of course.

Of course there was no body. Because no one had died. Only a version of him they preferred. A fiction. They had buried his old name. Held a funeral for the person they thought he used to be. Not because he was gone, but because they couldn’t stand to see him still here, still alive, still himself.

They grieved him not out of love, but out of refusal. Out of disgust. Out of the belief that changing had meant killing. They couldn’t see him without mourning the person he never truly was. So they put up a stone. A placeholder for a discomfort they couldn’t name out loud.

He climbed out of the grave slowly. Sat beside it, mud on his hands, his coat hanging open, his heart loud in his ears. He reached into his wallet. Took out his ID. James. Not proof of life, exactly—just proof of self. He placed it on the stone. Let it rest there. Then he stood. He didn’t look back.

The grave would still be there, of course. It would fill again. The stone would remain. A lie carved in granite. But it was empty. And it would stay so.