The Two Lives of Lydia Bird

by Josie Silver

Most of life’s defining moments happen unexpectedly; sometimes they slide past you completely unnoticed until afterward, if at all. The last time your child is small enough to carry on your hip. An eye roll exchanged with a stranger who becomes your life-long best friend. The summer job you apply for on impulse and stay at for the next twenty years. Those kinds of things.

It’s probably for the best if the last time you do something momentous passes you by unheralded:

I’ll tell her how sometimes, on the dark days, she’s been the only light I could see.

“Your life is still your life, Lyds. You’re still here, inconveniently breathing, watching the sun go down and the moon come up regardless of whether you think it’s got a damn nerve showing its shiny face every day.”

“When you’re young you think you’ve got all the time in the world,” she says. “And then suddenly you turn around and you’re old and one of you isn’t there anymore and you wonder how the years went so fast.”

The problem with addiction is that at some point you have to give up whatever it is that’s taken you over, or else give yourself over completely to it.

Grief is an odd thing. It’s mine, and no one can do it for me, but there’s been this whole supporting cast of silent actors around me in the wings.

“Time changes everything in the end, Freddie, and I’ve realized now that that’s okay, because what we have is more than just here, or just now. You and me, we’re all the time, and we’re always, and we’re everywhere. If I live a million lifetimes, I’ll find you in all of them, Freddie Hunter.”

The human brain is wired to cope with grief. It knows even as we fall into unfathomably dark places, there will be light again, and if we just keep moving forward in one brave straight line, however slowly, we’ll find our way back again.

You don’t get over losing someone you love in six months or two years or twenty, but you do have to find a way to carry on living without feeling as if everything that comes afterward is second best. Some people walk up mountains, others throw themselves out of planes. Everyone has to find their own way back, and if they’re lucky they’ll have people who love them to hold their hand.