A crowded room filled with strangers. There were too many of them around, she thought. And if she had been honest with herself, she would have seen that there was nothing that any of them could do. And yet they were all there, smothering her with their words, their condolences and, to a degree, their demands on her strength. They all wanted to say they were there for her, but it seemed some of them really just wanted her to be there for them. Making her way to a darker corner, she closed her eyes and imagined that it was the next day, or the day after that, or the one after that... Any day except for that one. Any day except for the one before, or any of the ones in the past week. Tomorrow would be better, even if it was harder in some ways. It’d be easier with no one standing around her and watching what she ate, reminding her that she ‘had to keep her strength up’ or that she ‘had to try and think of what he would have wanted for her’. It would have been easier had none of this happened, she argued, but then people felt worse for upsetting her, and sometimes it was just as easy to fight the battles in her mind. She was getting good at that. Somehow she could imagine what she’d say spontaneously in defense of her actions, and when whoever it was countered (with what she imagined, of course, because she had to remind herself this was all just internal dialogue she was having with a fictitious version of the person in front of her) she would let it all out. There was some comfort in the screaming match she had in her head. It made her feel a little less empty, a little more human and less mechanical. But mechanical was what they expected, and she gave it to them in abundance. She held her tongue and refused to reply unless she had no other earthly way around it. Most of the time she’d just block out everything being said around her. There were things she’d rather think about; things that seemed more fitting to concentrate on. Sometimes there was the dialogue she held as near as she could imagine anything ever being, and it was all about what it used to be like... the conversations they had shared, the way things had sounded when he said them in just his way—a distinctly unique way that made her nostalgic. Even so, he was gone, and no matter how many times she imagined the way he said turnip or quarter, there was no way to get that back. Gone was gone, was gone, was gone, and there wasn’t a way to go back in time. She couldn’t freeze it, and she couldn’t have changed the way things happened. She was there, and he wasn’t, and now it was her turn to go on, even if it meant dealing with half friends and acquaintances at what would be the most vulnerable point in her life. His death. Irony definitely was a double- edged sword. There it was, the time to say goodbye, and all she wanted to do was tell the world to stop spinning so she could get her bearings about her. She wasn’t ready for it. For that. For anything, it seemed. And even so, the world kept spinning and all she could do was close her eyes and pray for it to stop for her—just long enough that she could manage her way down, and into the darkness, following after him perhaps. Or just escaping the empty condolences. Top of Form 1 ? Bottom of Form 1