She didn’t scream. She didn’t cry. She didn’t even whisper his name.

When Brandon Blackstock — her ex-husband and the father of her two children — drew his last breath, Kelly Clarkson stood perfectly still. Witnesses say she stared at him for only a heartbeat before turning on her heel and walking out of the room.

Halfway down the hospital corridor, her knees buckled. The 42-year-old singer collapsed against the sterile white wall, sliding to the floor as though the life had been ripped from her chest. Nurses rushed to her aid, but those who saw her say she seemed deaf to the chaos around her.

The official paperwork called it “acute emotional trauma.” But friends tell a different story. “Kelly doesn’t fall apart easily,” one family insider told Daily Mail. “She’s had her heart broken before, but this was different. This was the kind of pain that changes you.”

And then there was the object.

When hospital staff tried to lift her to a gurney, they found her right hand locked around something small and worn — so tight they had to gently pry her fingers open. What they revealed stopped the entire room in silence: a tarnished silver guitar pick, its engraving nearly faded from years of use.

According to one mourner, it was Brandon’s. “He used that pick the night they first sang together,” the source revealed. “Nobody even knew she still had it. It must have meant everything to her.”

For the rest of the day, Kelly didn’t speak. She didn’t eat. She didn’t cry. She simply held that pick, running her thumb over the faded etching, as if it were the last piece of him she could still keep.