I used to think of Keane in terms of what the world said he lacked: words, independence, the “right” reactions in public. That night in the armchair, with my baby on his chest and the cat stretched across his lap, I saw something else: a man whose quiet had never meant emptiness, only depth. His palm thudding a gentle rhythm against Milo’s back wasn’t just comfort; it was memory, inheritance, a language he’d been speaking without sound for years.
The recorder from Glenhaven didn’t give us our mother back, but it stitched a thread between the three of them: my mum’s off-key lullaby, my brother’s fragile voice, my son’s delighted giggles. Watching Keane stand in our backyard, ukulele shaking, singing “My sunshine is you” to a one-year-old who didn’t know to be amazed, I realised I’d misread the whole story. Keane was never the burden I carried. He was the bridge—between past and present, grief and grace, loneliness and a home so full of love it hums.
