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November 26 - November 29, 2025
Elizabeth is always alone now. Always alone, and never alone: that was grief.
If you find your own way somewhere, you can go back whenever you choose.
“Exactly,” says Ibrahim. “The answer to every dilemma is in whom you ask for advice.”
“When we have a dilemma”—his KitKat story is true, by the way, but is maybe for another time—“we ask the person who will give us the answer we already know.
How many men like Jasper sit behind beige front doors in quiet bungalows, not knowing how to dress or what to eat or where to go? Wanting above all else not to be a nuisance? Joyce wishes she could save them all.
“When old friends die, you’re furious, because you’ve never quite finished what you were saying to them.”
“What happened” is never what defines you in life; “What you did next” is what defines you.
“They can’t tell you,” says Elizabeth. “That’s the thing about your own grief. No one can ever know it but you.”
Joyce’s love for her is unconditional, Joanna knows that, but, really, unconditional love has a huge flaw. If you love me no matter what, who I actually am doesn’t matter. If someone loves your essence, your very being, what can you do to make them love you more or love you less? Nothing: there is no space. So the only option left to you is to continually prod at that unconditional love, to test it and stretch it, to mock it even.
When things are noisy, and everyone is asking you to look at something right this instant, we mustn’t forget all the things still going on in quiet corners. There’s the news, and then there’s life.
