People think that numbness is the absence of feelings, but numbness is the sense of being overwhelmed by too many feelings, and so you’re shutting down. When people say, “Oh, I’m numb, I’m not feeling anything,” actually, you’re feeling so much, you’re feeling flooded, you’re feeling overwhelmed, and so we need to figure out what you’re feeling.
The Quiet Room:
When Lena’s son died, the world didn’t shatter the way she’d imagined it would. Instead, everything grew quiet.
The funeral passed like a slideshow she wasn’t part of. She saw herself sitting in the front row, hands folded neatly, nodding to condolence after condolence, eyes dry and polite. Inside, there was only stillness—so deep it felt like snowfall muffling the roads, soundless and slow. Everyone kept asking how she was holding up, and she smiled and said, “I’m okay.” She almost believed it.
What no one saw was how she’d wake in the middle of the night, not from a dream, but from an aching nothingness. She’d reach for a feeling—grief, rage, sadness—but found her insides hollow, like someone had scooped her out. It scared her more than the loss itself. She wondered if something inside her had broken permanently.
Weeks passed. Her brother sobbed on the phone to her. Friends brought flowers and casseroles, whispered memories of her son like fragile glass. Lena nodded. She said Thank you. She carried on.
One afternoon, she sat in her son’s favorite chair, her fingers absently trailing the worn armrest. A patch of sunlight fell across the carpet. Dust floated lazily in the beam. Nothing special. But something shifted—barely. A flicker. A crack.
Then it came, not in a single tear or sob, but in a sudden tightness in her chest, like trying to hold a dam of water with bare hands. The memory of her son’s laugh—sharp and warm and a little wild—echoed in her ears. It echoed too loudly. Then came the smell of his clothes the way he always drank from his favorite cup, the time he drove through a storm just to be home with his mother.
Too many memories. Too many feelings.
They crashed over her in a violent tide: guilt for not crying at the funeral, sorrow so deep it stung, rage at cancer, at doctors, at God. Fear—because if she started to cry now, would she ever stop?
Numbness, she realized, had never been the absence of feeling. It had been a lock on a door too heavy to open. It had been the body’s way of keeping her from drowning too soon.
Now the door creaked. And with it came the grief, in all its terrible beauty.
She curled into the chair, finally sobbing—not just for the loss of her son, but for every moment she hadn’t let herself feel it. The numbness hadn’t been weakness. It had been protection.
Later, when her tears subsided, the world still felt broken. But not silent anymore.
In Conclusion:
Grief doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it waits in silence, letting us catch our breath before we face its full weight. Have you experienced that kind of quiet before?
Monica Lucia is the Author of The Final Chapter and a passionate advocate for those navigating grief and loss. She is the Founder of Widow’s Den and Sisterhood of LKN, dedicated to supporting families In addition to her writing and community-building work, Monica is the Grief and Bereavement Counselor at Raymer-Kepner Funeral Home, Huntersville and Denver.
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