The house is silent, his noises conspicuously absent. I am no longer suspended in that terrible limbo. I can no longer miss him like I have been, like there’s an end in sight. I take to my bed like a consumptive Victorian lady. Then, when I learn that there is to be a postmortem, the emotional duct tape keeping me together finally gives way. “But you saw him that day, no? How did he seem, Eve?” Eve, Eve, Eve. “How could this happen, Eve?”“Did he have a doctor, Eve?” I spend the first two days after Quentin dies pacing the house, twitching curtains to watch the parade of visitors arriving only to be sent away and dodging the arms of my family, who, after the police finally ceased their questions, begin asking their own. A preamble to real Denial, which brings its falsehoods and proclamations of It’s not true and Not you, girl. When someone you love dies, there’s this period of disbelief - a time of dug-in heels, the refusal to process your new reality. This isn’t something that can be forgiven with a kiss. No drunk-dialing snowballing into hour-long reminiscences that end in reunion - the kind of sheet-tangling makeup sex that makes you stop in your tracks when you are besieged by a flashback. There are no relapses, unplanned nights of passion wreathed in nostalgia followed by bittersweet, awkward mornings where you navigate the putting on of clothes, suddenly aware your jeans are ripped, your underarms unshaven for the past three weeks.īut the worst thing about death, the thing that makes the comparison laughable, almost cruel, is there is no chance of reconciliation. Logging on to Instagram to stalk his profile reaps a hollow reward there will be no updates, no new faces, no experiences lived without you. How could it not?ĭeath makes it impossible for you to demand a list of reasons for the demise of your relationship. Well-meaning, perhaps, but bullshit nonetheless. They called it a “kind of bereavement.” While there are certain similarities - the spontaneous tears, the despair, the need to press items of clothing to your face and inhale the lingering scent of your beloved - this sentiment is incorrect. I read somewhere once that going through a breakup is like experiencing the death of a partner. Which is significant because…Īnd here is one thing you should know about me: He was, as far as I and everyone else could tell, perfectly happy. He was the great love of my life despite his penchant for going incommunicado.
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