Nearly half his life now, but he’ll never forget those days in the immediate aftermath. That grief so keen it made it hard to breathe, as if he himself were the one who’d actually died and was only slowly coming to realize it. That sense of unreality, that shrieking alarm in your head, telling you there’d been a mistake, this wasn’t right, you’re in the wrong reality. That desperation for one more minute together. One more second. Even just the sound of their voice.
