When she died, my mind rebelled against the truth of it. That’s what happened at first. At first it wasn’t even possible that she should be gone and that I wouldn’t talk with her again.

Then, the first night without her, I wrote her a great long letter. I cried myself to sleep that night over its pages, praying that the tears would carry the words to her as they carried the ink, diffusing in pale blue circles out from each drop across the page.

The next night I went back to her house, and I stayed there for days, just me, alone with everything. It wasn’t silent. Moments not filled with music were filled with the sounds of my sobs. All the noise in the house in those days was the call of my distress.

I would sit in her chair and play her a song. My confusion would mount with each verse. Couldn’t she hear me? Wouldn’t she comment when I was done? And to reach the parts she had particularly liked was particularly painful. Then the pain would gather in the back of my throat and my voice would dry up, and the empty house would ring with sighing for a while.

I ate the food she had bought off of the dishes she had washed. I changed the sheets and slept in her bed. And wandering the rooms I picked up the scraps of pretty paper she had doodled on. I read the notes she had left behind. Did she mean to leave them for someone? For herself? Did she know I would be the one to read them? It seemed that the notes had been written and left for the world. They weren’t meant to be read, they were just meant to exist. And yet I was reading them, because there was no one left to know that they were there. I had to keep them extant by reading them, by sharing the secret knowledge of the inside of her head.

The second-to-last night I spent there I couldn’t settle. It was late, but not too late (I went to bed early in those days). It was dark, though. It was winter. In previous years I had railed petulantly against the dying of the sun each day, so early in the evening. Now I railed with conviction against the dying of someone I had known, someone I had talked to and shared my mind with. What became of the parts of me that I had given to her, when she gave it all back to the world? What happened to the thoughts I had sparked in her, when her mind subsided into a last sleep, finally deep and undisturbed?

I found myself on the landing, huddled in a ball, my throat sore again. It is the part I hate about crying. The pain in the throat is such an unnatural one, it makes me cry harder to feel it. I called out “why” many times, asking the empty house “why” she had gone, “why” I was still there, “why” the pain in my throat was so great. “Why” did we have to live so delicately, every moment fleeting, until even the last few seconds pass in a gasp and there is suddenly no more?

I feared for myself, more than anything. On hearing of her death I had told myself readily and truthfully, “Now she feels no more pain. She doesn’t hurt and she doesn’t fear anymore.” That’s true. She doesn’t fear anymore. But for me the fear would rise and rise. A little bit of me went with her, as I have said. And what became of it? I knew it was gone. All those things I’d told her in our time together, they were gone. And she had been the only keeper of some of my secrets. There are things I have said and done which I no longer remember, but which she held within her. Part of my story, part of who I am, was in her and in no one else. Now it’s gone.

It was as if a part of me had died. I understand that phrase now, “It felt as if a part of me had died.” It doesn’t mean that some part of an organ inside me, like a section of the heart, shrivels, whithers, and becomes deceased. No, there was a very real part of me in her, and now it no longer exists. In fact I have no knowledge of what it was, that part, so it is lost completely, forever. She didn’t tell anyone about it, she just kept it, as she might have kept a precious possession of mine if I asked. But I never asked her to keep a part of me. She kept it because no one else did. And she took it with her.

Give me another day in that empty house. Come back and see me the next night, my last night there. Again I crouch on the landing, clinging to the warmth of the wooden floors. Again I have been crying, again my throat pains me.

But when I opened my eyes that last night on the landing, something whispered in me, and I took its words to heart. I don’t know if it was the right way. I don’t know if it would happen the same way for anyone else. I don’t know if I will suffer greatly down the road, a penance paid for suffering less in the present time. But when I opened my eyes the last night in the house that was hers I heeded the voice inside which said:

“Your suffering is needless.”

I still ached with longing, often. But I seldom cried. And more and more my longing changed and became instead a joy that I had been so lucky as to know her. And though the thought brought tears stinging in my eyes, my throat would stay open and alive.

I breathe freely now, most days. I have lost something; that is the way of life. Each day I lose something else, and I cannot remember what it is. But I can still remember a great deal of what I lost. And while I do remember I will rejoice, for knowing that I lost it I also know that I had it for a while.