The word I can't find is starting to feel personal

There's a word I've been chasing for weeks, the one that would finally make the silence make sense, and at this point I'm not sure if I'm trying to remember it or if it's trying to avoid me. My notebook has pages of near-misses, words that almost fit, and I'm starting to resent them the way you resent a name you can't recall at a funeral. Maybe the answer is that there isn't one, and that's exactly the problem.