After Annie

by Anna Quindlen

He had to make a memory person because he was never, ever again going to see, speak with, hold, the real one. It seemed so obvious that that would be the case when someone died, but he couldn’t seem to wrap his mind around it, that he would never see Annie again, that they were in the kitchen together one winter evening and then she was gone for good. The foreverness of it shocked him every single day.

“One need never be ashamed or afraid of grieving. Those who do not grieve cannot feel.”

The incessant drumbeat of women talking to other women. It never ended, except when one of them died, and then the silence left by that one woman was as big as the sky.

Becoming a man seemed to mean becoming a person who would be poisoned by loss and heartbreak and still pretend that neither existed.