216/365 03/26/2026

The clock tick sounded time’s inexorable march as the family sat in the warm, dim, chintzy room and stared, each of them—mother, father, grandfather, boy of 12, girl of 8—into a vague middle distance not in the room but somewhere outside of self, each wrestling a question that ranged from “How can life go on when life’s very engine—the very thing that kept it going and moving forward—is suddenly gone?” to “Why isn’t anyone talking?”