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He thought that he was getting better. He really thought he was. Just last week he was able to reply to the cashier's 'have a good day!' with a 'thank you'.
Sure, it was said entirely too fast, so much so that the words blurred into each other. And, maybe, it was said at a volume that they probably didn't even hear.
But it was improvement. Like his mom said, baby steps. Slight improvement is better than none.
But that's when everything goes wrong isn't it? Just when things are starting to get better?
Murphy's Law— Anything that can go wrong will.
“Shelly, they’re going to close the casket now if you want to say goodbye to your dad,” she says to him gently.
He looks at the casket and his sister crying next to it. His throat closes up at the idea of standing at the altar in front of almost the whole town. And he hates himself. Hates that he can't talk.
His fingers dig into the seat cushion. And if he could just talk everything would be fine. He needs to talk. He needs to say something.
He says nothing.
His mother give him a sympathetic smile that doesn't reach her eyes. Those terribly sad brown eyes that dig into his soul and makes him want the rip the words out of his throat.
He sits in silence for the rest of the ceremony. But inside, he was screaming.
That scream continued when they got home. The screaming was so loud and overwhelming but at the same time so unbearably quiet. Everything was wrong and everything was too quiet.
The usual blaring of a football game on the TV and the thumping of the laundry machine were gone now. The house was never this silent.
The emptiness of it all seem to seep inside him and extinguish the raging screams that was building inside him. And replace it with cool, numb emptiness.
He isn't feeling anything at the moment.
His dad died and he can't even find it in him to cry.
Everything is wrong and everything is quiet. He's wrong and he's too quiet.
When was he ever loud?
(When was he ever alright?) Goes unsaid.
His relationship with his father was always complicated. But he still looked up at him. Still loved him, even if he never said it. Especially if he never said it.
But none of that mattered anymore because he's gone.
In Star Trek: The Next Generation when Data is presumed dead Captain Picard reads act five, scene two of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
"He was a man for all in all, I shall not look upon his like again."
Hamlet's last momento to his father.
That quote is ironic because he see's his father's ghost in the next act. And Data is found to be alive at the end of the episode so Picard got a second chance but Dad's never coming back. And Sheldon's never getting a second chance.
"What are you doing?" Missy's voice pushed through his thoughts.
"Thinking about Star Trek."
"What is wrong with you our dad just died!" She angrily stomps out of the room. It's silent again.
Even when he can talk it's never the right thing.
Sheldon doesn't call after her. He probably couldn't even get the words to his mouth anyways.
What is wrong with him?
And like Newton's first law— "an object in motion will stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force"
Sheldon continued to not speak, until he was acted upon by an unbalanced force. That force being, of course, his mother. And the therapist she set up for him.
"We all experience grief in different ways" they had told his mom. "He'd come out of it eventually."
Sheldon decided to accept that answer. He'd like to believe that this was just a phase and will all go away soon.
"Shelly." She said to him on the car way home. "Now, I don't know what goes on in that brain of yours, but I want you to know that you can always talk to me."
Except he can't always talk to her. Good Lord, he can't talk to her right now.
All he can do is nod his head and look at the window, turning his head away from those sweet eyes that make him almost feel something.
He only does that even though he wants nothing more than to break down in tears and cry like a tall child.
He doesn't, he can't. It's fine he hates crying anyways.
He hates crying just as much as he hates himself.
It's silent the rest of the drive.