My name is Mabel. I’m 83 years old, and all my life I thought I understood loneliness. I thought it meant being alone in a quiet house or eating dinner with no one sitting across from me. But I learned the truth much later. Real loneliness is when the people you love most—the ones you brought into this world—decide you’re not worth even a moment of their time. And nothing prepared me for the emptiness my own sons created. For decades, I believed Trenton and Miles were good boys. I

The very first thing I noticed that morning was the silence. My daughter, Maisie, was only three months old, and newborns don’t “sleep through the night.” They wake up, cry, fuss, and demand attention. So waking up to complete silence felt wrong, like the world was holding its breath. I reached for the baby monitor.The screen was static—white noise only. I blinked, confused, and sat up. Erin wasn’t beside me. “Probably feeding Maisie,” I muttered to myself as I pushed the blanket back and stepped into the hallway. The floor

There are two kinds of tired. One makes your legs ache, your eyes burn, and you fix it with coffee and silence. Then there’s the kind that sits behind your ribs, heavy and unmoving… like grief that didn’t quite get the memo. That’s the one I carried that Tuesday evening as I stood in line at the pharmacy. I was still in my wrinkled button-down from work. My tie was half-loosened, the one my daughter Ava insists on straightening every morning like it’s our little ritual. “You have to look