The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

Would have, would have. The dead dwell in the conditional, tense of the unreal. But there is also the extraordinary sense that you have become omniscient, that nothing we do or think or feel can be kept from you. The extraordinary sense that you are reading these words, that you know what they’ll say even before I write them.

If reading really does increase empathy, as we are constantly being told that it does, it appears that writing takes some away.

Here is what I learned: Simone Weil was right. Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.

I have heard of a study according to which cats, unlike many other animal species, do not forgive. (Like writers, perhaps, who, according to an editor I know, never forget a slight.)

It is curious how the act of writing leads to confession. Not that it doesn’t also lead to lying your head off.

Nothing has changed. It’s still very simple. I miss him. I miss him every day. I miss him very much. But how would it be if that feeling was gone? I would not want that to happen.

What we miss—what we lose and what we mourn—isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have.