To Paradise

by Hanya Yanagihara

And now I have. I know that loneliness cannot be fully eradicated by the presence of another; but I also know that a companion is a shield, and without another person, loneliness steals in, a phantom seeping through the windows and down your throat, filling you with a sorrow nothing can answer. I cannot promise that my granddaughter won’t be lonely, but I have prevented her from being alone. I have made certain her life will have a witness.

And I cried and cried, even though I was ashamed to be crying, and ashamed to be crying for myself as much as for my husband: I was crying because I knew so little, and because I understood so little, and because, although my husband had not loved me, I had loved him, and I think he had known that. I was crying because he did love someone, this someone who knew all about me and about whom I knew nothing, and I was crying because this someone was now losing him as well. I was crying because he had been sick and he hadn’t thought to tell me or been able to tell me—I didn’t know which, but it didn’t make a difference: I hadn’t known.