You know that feeling when the air just… stops? Like someone hit the pause button on the entire world, and you’re the only one still moving, but even you’re doing it in slow motion, just kinda drifting. That’s how it’s been since Tuesday at 11:17 AM. That’s when the KLM flight KL602 took off from Schiphol, carrying my youngest, my baby, all the way to Delft. For university. You spend twenty-two years, almost twenty-three actually, building this whole routine. Every morning, for over two decades, it’s been about them. Get them up, get them fed, get them dressed, get them to school. Even when they’re grown, even when they’re driving themselves, there’s still that hum in the background. The knowledge that they’re there. Their friends are over, the fridge is always half-empty, the laundry pile is a monument to chaos. The constant requests – “Mom, where’s my…?” “Mom, can you…?” “Mom, I need… NOW.” And then it just… stops. The quiet is deafening. Truly. I woke up yesterday morning at 6:45 AM, exactly when I used to wake Ben for his 7:30 AM bus. The sun was hitting the same spot on the wall, but there was no rush. No clatter of cereal bowls. No frantic search for a misplaced textbook. Just the hum of the refrigerator. And a pang. Not a sharp, painful one. More like a dull ache, like an old bruise you forgot about until you accidentally press it. I went into his room. The bed was stripped, everything packed. He’d left a single, slightly crushed packet of stroopwafels on his desk, next to a Post-it note that just said “Thanks for everything, Mom. x.” That little ‘x’ just hanging there. Like an afterthought. Or maybe it was meant to be small. He’s always been very precise, Ben. A proper little engineer even then. You know, the actual goodbye at the airport wasn't even that dramatic. He hugged me, a quick pat on the back. My husband, bless his pragmatic soul, just shook his hand and told him to study hard. I tried to make eye contact, tried to hold his gaze for just a second longer, but he was already looking past me, excited. He’d been talking about this for months – the canals, the bike culture, the international student scene. All the things that are not here, not with me. And I felt… nothing much. A little smile, a little wave. Then watching him disappear through security, a tiny figure with a too-big backpack. It felt like watching a movie scene, not experiencing it. Like I was an extra in my own life. A background character. It SHOULD have been gut-wrenching, right? All those Hallmark cards, all the stories. “My heart broke.” “I cried for days.” I just… drove home. Listened to the radio. Got a latte. The house is so clean now. TOO clean. My husband's been saying it's great, how tidy everything is. He’s already making plans for a shed, for a new garden bed, for us to finally take that cruise. “Our time now, darling,” he keeps saying, with that slightly forced cheerfulness. And I nod, I smile. I even help him clear out the garage. But every time I pick up a stray Lego brick that somehow got missed, or find an old dried-up marker under the couch, I just feel… flat. I call my own mother, of course. She’s 83, lives three states away. The calls are always the same. “Did Ben get there safely?” “Did he call you?” “Are you eating properly?” She worries about my eating habits like I’m still 16. She sounds frail, her voice a little reedy. And I tell her, yes, he’s fine, everything’s grand. I don’t mention the quiet, the emptiness. What would be the point? It would just make her fret. And anyway, what would I even say? ‘Mom, I feel like a discarded appliance’? Sometimes you just hit this point, don't you? Where all your purpose, all the tiny gears that kept your internal clock ticking, just… stop meshing. And you’re left with all this perfectly good machinery, but nothing to actually do. Nothing to power. I’m 52. What now? Get a job? Most of my skills are in organizing school bake sales and negotiating screen time limits. Sounds ridiculous, even to me. I just sit here, at 2 AM, looking at my phone. Ben’s profile picture, smiling. Three thousand eight hundred and forty-two miles away. And I just scroll. And scroll.