“Exactly.” He looks away. “I still feel that way.” “What if it’s both?” I say. “What if your sadness—your grief—is what allowed you to love Ruby with so much joy when you first saw her?” I remember a woman I treated whose husband had died. When she fell in love a year later—a love all the more sweet because of the loss of her husband—she worried that others would judge her. (So soon? Didn’t you love your husband of thirty years?) In fact, her friends and family were excited for her. It wasn’t their judgment she was hearing—it was her own. What if her happiness was an insult to her husband’s
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