The steering wheel vibrates beneath my hands while the smell of coffee from my thermos fills the car. The dashboard lights shine across my face as I drive along.  Only the treeline along the pavement serves as a guide, a constant marker toward the next destination. The radio hisses with static in the background, a dull wash of white noise between silence and my thoughts.

On nights when the absence beside me seems almost physical, I drift off in thought of the memories that sit with me in the silence. The first night I met my friend Lisa, we drove all over Long Island and got to know each other. Many nights, we’d drive Penelope home after a fun weekend, and she’d be asleep on the backseat floor.

The uncertainty of what’s ahead gnaws at my insides, but I forge onward. The headlights offer temporary relief, brightening the pavement just enough for me to keep going, yet not enough to show me my next destination. Bit by bit, I trudge along the unknown highway. Maybe that’s all life ever gives us, only a small space to make the upcoming decision. There’s enough road to reach the next story, but never to witness the ending.

I watch the forest edge rise and fall from the surrounding darkness. It’s almost indistinguishable from the night itself. I cannot see any individual markings on the branches or leaves. I can only see their silhouettes, steady and unwavering, framing the highway ahead of me. This becomes a map of the ordinary things in my life.

The alarm in the morning, the sound of Parker barking to wake me. The office I need to attend, and the to-do list that doesn’t seem to end. These responsibilities do not care whether I am tired, grieving, hopeful, angry, or afraid. Their indifference is comforting because routine asks little of me emotionally; it only maps out what’s next. Wake up, get dressed, go to work, and return home. Try again tomorrow. Sometimes I complain about the mundaneness of repetition, and other times, I’m grateful for it because it’s the key to survival.

I reach for the radio dial, searching for a signal somewhere inside the noise. For a second, I think I hear something familiar. A voice, a comforting tone that makes my hand freeze over the controls, but it disappears as quickly as I find it. Static returns as my passenger.

Grief stings that way. The longing for what was lingers along. I wish I could see Penelope zoom across the house in pure joy again, or hear Lisa’s laugh at something silly. Loved ones and the lives we lived journeyed through plainly, like a radio station gliding over the airwaves. They packed the vehicle with the company we longed for when the road was too dark to go alone.

These are things we once received clearly. They filled the car without us ever considering a day when the frequency might disappear. The loved ones I’ve lost live inside that static.

Sometimes, their presence drifts back with such clarity that for a moment, I believe I could reach out and touch them. Memories come out of nowhere, and suddenly they are not someone lost, but someone who is. For a moment the distance between then and now collapses. Then the signal fades out.

I want to turn the dial backward and find the exact station where these worlds exist, untouched by time and fate. But there are some stations we cannot return to, so I let the static play. I used to think silence would be easier, but silence makes the missing louder. The static at least reminds me that absence is not emptiness. It is evidence that something once occupied that space. Something mattered enough to leave the noise behind.

The road rolls on.

There are nights when I’m exhausted by how far it may stretch, and I think about everything life has ahead of me without these versions of myself and the people who left with them. There are people to love, to lose, and versions of me to still uncover. The darkness ahead appears enormous, so I stop trying to view the whole road.

I look at the tree lines; they’re still here.

The familiarity of routine and small rituals I once dismissed as ordinary become the markers telling me I’m moving in the right direction. They cannot protect me from what’s ahead or guarantee there will not be sharp turns, breakdowns, storms, or stretches when I do not know where I am. But they keep me grounded in the mile of life I’m driving now. Endurance is not about knowing where the road ends; it’s about continuing even if you don’t know where you’re going. Even when the road is dark and the way is unclear, I trust that dawn is quietly making its way toward me. There will be new mornings, and with them, the comfort of gentle light returning, guiding me forward, one mile at a time.

Editor: Lucy Cafiero