Ayla

“When someone you love first dies, they're all you can see, aren't they? All you can hear?
Blotting everything else out.
That changes. They get quieter over the years. They still whisper to you sometimes, but the world get louder. You can see it and hear it again. There's a gap in it, where they used to be. But you get used to the gap; so used to it that you hardly see it.
And then some days, out of nowhere, you're making the tea or hanging out the washing or sitting on the bus and it's there again; that aching, empty space that will never be filled.”
― Clare Furniss, The Year of the Rat