A Separation

by Katie Kitamura

The emptiness of death is too hard to sustain, in the end we barely manage to do it for a day, an hour, after the death event itself. There was something self-serving not only in Isabella’s grief, but in all grief, which in the end concerns itself not with the dead, but with those who are left behind. An act of consignment occurs: the dead became fixed, their internal lives were no longer the fathomless and unsolvable mystery they might once have been, on some level their secrets no longer of interest.

The driver also opened his door and stepped out, Isabella then moved away from the vehicle. How do you know this is the place? The driver looked away. Isabella’s tone was imperious, as if grief were a service industry like any other, her experience of grief was failing to meet her standards, she would like to speak to the management.