It was shaping up to be a completely ordinary afternoon. The morning had passed in a familiar, almost imperceptible routine. I was busy with daily household chores, the washing machine was running, and the sunlight filtered softly through the living room windows. The silence in the house was comfortable, the kind of silence you only experience when the children are grown and have left home. Nothing suggested that this day would unfold differently from previous ones, until my son called and said something he rarely said.
We spoke quite often, often with hasty phone calls between classes or a quick text on the weekend, but this conversation had a different tone from the first second. He didn’t ask me for help with his studies, he didn’t mention any financial or practical problems, and he didn’t even seem angry or frustrated by the frenzy of university life. There was no panic, no rush. The line was surprisingly clear, allowing me to catch every detail of his voice. He paused, a breath that lasted a little longer than usual due to the hiss of the phone line, and said softly, “I love you.” That was it. No “see you later,” no “talk to you soon.”
