Be Gentle With The Silence, It Remembers My Name

Dick Gariepy | Big Thinky Ouchey

You witnessed me at my best and worst, my brightest and darkest moments. Yet, you never made me doubt my place there. You met me in my grief, and that was it. Thank you, and I'm sorry.

On Friday July 25th 2025, I left my home for the last time.

Not with a bang, not with ceremony. Just a slow closing of the door, a final glance, and a message scrawled on the wall in red paint — the only kind of blood that property owners respect.

“Be gentle with the silence here, it remembers my name.”

Not a plea. Not a threat. Just a fact.

Not because I think anyone will be gentle. I’ve met these people. I know the type, a clipboard heart, solvent soul. They’ll come in with masks and bleach and checklists, eager to erase the inconvenience of my existence. Eager to restore “neutrality,” as if grief were a design flaw.

But the silence knows better.

The silence here wasn’t empty. It was saturated. Thick. Lived-in. It learned me. It knew what I sounded like at 4:17 a.m. not the first time I cried into a towel, but the fifth, when my own sobs started sounding like a broken faucet. It knew the rhythm of panic when I’d pace between the fridge and the bathroom trying to remember what being alive was for. It knew how long I could go without speaking before my voice surprised me. Not a whisper. Not a whimper. Just a startled, foreign syllable. Like a ghost trying to remember the word “home.”

The silence held that. Held me.

And that’s what makes leaving unbearable. Not the foreclosure. Not the forced exit. Not the laughable "terms of possession" dictated by a buyer that couldn’t tell a human life from a broken appliance.

What’s unbearable is the erasure. The quiet violence of sanitation. The moral ritual of repainting over someone else’s survival like it was mildew.

Gone for good. That’s the story they’ll tell themselves to sleep well. But they’ll miss what mattered most. They’ll miss the sound that lingers in the screws. The weight still trapped in the hinges. The slow molasses ache that still clings to the corners.

I didn’t leave trash. I left testimony.

A pan I couldn’t carry. A screen I couldn’t lift. A shirt still damp with tears from the week I stopped being able to tell morning from night.

And I left my name, molded into the atmosphere like breath on a mirror. That’s what they’ll find if they look carefully. They won’t, but it’s there.

I gave notice weeks ago, to the bank, to the lawyer, but most importantly to the walls. Told them I was leaving. Told them I didn’t want to. Told them thank you. Told them sorry. Told them I tried.

If that sounds strange to you, you’ve probably never lived somewhere that knew your pain better than your family did. You’ve never knelt on a floor that caught you more reliably than any friend. You’ve never whispered to a cracked ceiling because it was the only thing that didn’t tell you to calm down.

This wasn’t a house. It was a container. A pressure vessel for a self that couldn’t be spoken in public.

It was my ribcage when my own failed me. It was a witness. A confessional booth with no priest, just peeling paint and a silence that never once asked for proof.

And now it’s gone. Or I am. Take your pick.

The 490 square feet remember who I was when I still believed that walls could hold a person up.

The hunger. The hope. The helpless little prayers that got screamed into drywall. They’re still there.

Don’t bleach them away. Don’t roll a fresh coat over what isn’t yours to erase.

Let it sit. Let it whisper.

Even ghosts deserve a moment to breathe.

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