Adverbs

by Daniel Handler

You can’t mind these things, you just can’t, for to dislike what makes a person human is to dislike all humans, or at least other people who can’t work clocks. You have to love the whole person, if you are truly in love. If you are going to take a lifelong journey with somebody, you can’t mind if the other person believes they are leaving for that journey an hour earlier than you, as long as truly, in the real world, you are both leaving at exactly the same time.

This is love, to sit with someone you’ve known forever in a place you’ve been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it’s time to go. You don’t care about yours. Why should it change, the love you feel, no matter how death goes?