I find myself walking the north field, the same routine for decades, but the absence of her morning queries creates an unexpected void. It’s a sensory deprivation, this silence, a physiological adjustment I’m apparently making, like losing a limb and the phantom ache that follows. The biological imperative to connect, to provide the daily reports she expected – it’s still there, a persistent neural pathway firing into empty air. It’s… bizarre, this latent dependency, this late-stage discovery that a significant portion of my daily internal monologue was actually externalized for her consumption. And now, just… gone.