He had been telling me every single morning since 1984. He was just doing it in a language I was too blind to read.

I closed the journal. The house felt bigger now, and much emptier.

I realized then that I wasn’t just grieving a husband. I was grieving a version of my own life that I had ignored because I was waiting for something louder.

I sat back down in his chair. I picked up his pen. I looked out the window at the empty feeder.

I wanted to write something back, but the book was full. There wasn’t a single empty line left in the entire thing.

“I saw you too,” I whispered to the empty room.

But he wasn’t there to hear it. He hadn’t been there for a long time.

I finally understood why he kept the feeder there. It wasn’t just to hide my reflection. It was to make sure that even when he was gone, I would still have something beautiful to look at while I made my coffee.

He had been taking care of me since the day we met, and I had spent the whole time wishing he was a different man.

I put the journal down on the table. I didn’t donate it to the Audubon Society. I couldn’t. I couldn’t let anyone else see those lines.

I realized the cruelest part of it all. I had asked him for his time for forty years, and he had given it to me every morning. But I was so busy wanting him to look at me that I never once thought to ask him what he was writing.

I had been standing right in front of him the whole time, and I never really saw him either.