My past week reads like Dickens.

It was the week of endings, it was the week of reckoning.
It was the loss of sound and the loss of someone dear.
It was a silence that screamed, and a goodbye that echoed.
It was the numbness of disbelief and the ache of memory.

It was a week where I still heard, but no longer understood.
It was a week where I spoke, but half my world no longer spoke back.
It was the unmaking of words — where recognition became a stranger,
and the simple gift of language disappeared behind a closed door.

It was the week of endings, it was the week of reckoning.

I lost my hearing in my left ear last Monday. Not some hearing — I mean recognition. Gone. Word comprehension: 0%. Sounds are still there — dull tones, muffled echoes — but the words? Lost. Like messages trapped in a bottle I can no longer open. I performed rudimentary tests on myself today, not quite ready to believe it. But truth, like silence, is hard to deny.

I’ve lived with death long enough to know its moods. But this felt different. Final. Irrevocable.
Something inside me simply… stopped. And if that wasn’t enough for one week, the universe delivered more: My neighbor — a beautiful soul of 71, someone I had known for years — passed away. She was light. Laurie familiarity. Warmth at the edge of my world. Now, she is memory.

It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

I don’t know what comes next. Maybe a cochlear implant. Maybe acceptance. Maybe both. But I do know this: In the silence, I’m hearing something new. Not in the ear. In the heart. It’s something about presence. About stillness. About how fragile everything really is — and how beautiful, too.

Reflections from a Fractured Week

If you’re reading this and you’ve experienced a loss — of hearing, of someone you love, of something essential — I want to tell you: you’re not alone in this strange middle ground between what was and what now is. Loss doesn’t always come crashing in. Sometimes, it arrives quietly, like a note you can’t quite hear anymore. But even in the hush, there is a heartbeat. Even in the absence, something remains. Even when words fall away, we still feel.

In Memory

To my neighbor Laurie — thank you for being a constant light.
To my left ear — thank you for all the years you carried me.
To this week — you broke me open. But maybe that’s how light gets in.