Those Who Save Us

by Jenna Blum

For one of the odd things about death, Trudy has discovered, is that in its wake one must go about business as usual; it seems heartless and wrong, but now that the rituals of mourning have been attended to, the sole task left to Trudy is to try and comprehend the enormity of this sudden change.

Nothing is ever quite right, is it, after a parent dies? No matter how well things go, something always feels slightly off . . .

It’s like being in a sort of club, isn’t it? A bereavement club. You don’t choose to join it; it’s thrust upon you. And the members whose lives have been changed have more knowledge than those who aren’t in it, but the price of belonging is so terribly high.

So you see, he says softly, we are all ashamed in one way or another. Who among us is not stained by the past?

Life is so often unfair and painful and love is hard to find and you have to take it whenever and wherever you can get it, no matter how brief it is or how it ends.

Each person has this choice to make about how to live with the past,