This Will All Be Over Soon: A Memoir

She’s so used to helping others. She doesn’t realize this means there are lines of people who would love to return the favor to her someday.

we can’t truly express our sympathies to each other because we are still grieving ourselves.

Possibilities. And now I’m slowing down, heading into fall, work, responsibility, cold weather, and darker days, and I have to look side to side to start taking inventory of what I’ve gained and what I’ve lost somehow along the way.

I’ve always been sad this time of year. I remember not quite having the vocabulary as a kid to describe how I could smell the end of summer in the air and it would make me want to cry.

I say all of this only as a friend admiring the strength and superhero powers of my friend. It is not my story to tell.

The hardest part for me, I think, or at least for now until some new phase of grief takes over, is that I have so many inside jokes that I can’t quite remember, and the only person who knew the other part of the joke isn’t there anymore.

Normally, I’m a horrible liar. But when it comes to lies that don’t matter, I can be frighteningly good. I sometimes wonder if this makes me slightly sociopathic.

We laze away the day playing my card games: Anomia, Monikers.

There is a person out there who has loved me more than anyone and I’ve loved him more than anyone. But he is just a person out there. And that’s how our story has to end.