Biggie’s “Hypnotize” was comforting; George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today” was too hard. I knew I would have to relearn how to listen to music, and that some of the music we’d loved together I’d never be able to hear again. Every time I started to cry, I remembered how Renée used to say real life was a bad country song, except bad country songs are believable and real life isn’t.
