The Empty Will

So she said hmm, and she held her tongue, and I, trusting soul that I was, let it go.

I truly believed, that evening, that losing Lawrence to a long illness would be the worst grief I would ever know.

I was wrong about that too.

I had buried a husband.

I had sat four months at a hospice bed.

I had thought, in my bones, that I had already met the worst grief a life could hand me, and that whatever years remained to me would at least be spared any fresh cruelty.

It is a comforting thing to believe, that you have already paid the most a life will ask.