When my parents died in a sudden car crash, my life collapsed in slow motion.

Grief didn’t arrive as an overwhelming wave—it seeped in quietly, in hospital hallways that smelled of antiseptic, in the muted voices of police officers who couldn’t look me in the eye, in the silence of a home that no longer echoed with my mother’s humming or my father’s laughter. I was nineteen, alone, and convinced the worst had already happened. Continues…