i read a lot

just some words that stick with me

[epeolatryreader]

The hardest thing about death is the grammar, the tense, […] That she used to do this, that she used to do that. She was, she is. She was Jim’s wife. Jack’s mom is dead. The grammar. That’s the worst thing of all.

— from Anxious People by Fredrik Backman

[epeolatryreader]

— from The Winners (Beartown Series) by Fredrik Backman

[epeolatryreader]

— from The Winners (Beartown Series) by Fredrik Backman

[epeolatryreader]

— from Us Against You by Fredrik Backman

[epeolatryreader]

In the morning, when the power comes back on, the weatherman cuts through our house and wakes us all up. From my bed, I can hear him announcing what will happen to you: You will go north. You will become a tropical storm. You will make it all the way to Labrador, and that is where you will come apart. That is where your winds will spread over the ocean until you are no longer Kathy, until you are only air.

But you will return to us, I know. When we are repainting the house or making pancakes for breakfast or digging in the garden or laughing at something funny with our heads back and our mouths wide open–the way you always laughed–we will breathe you in without even knowing it.

— from Notes On Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach

[epeolatryreader]

Mom looks at the ocean on TV, which is flooded with surfers on their boards, waiting patiently, like you are something to have faith in. I feel I might scream. All of a sudden, I can't stand it here for one more second, the smallness of our house, the constancy of the waves, the inevitability of disaster. I can't stand how even now, after all these years, I sometimes look down the hall and expect to still see you, coming out of our bedroom, brushing your teeth, toothpaste building like sea foam.

Because you never are. You are dead–I know you are dead. I saw it with my own eyes. I read about it in the autopsy report, over and over again, and now I know too much about your death. Fun facts that are not very fun, things you do not even know about yourself, like that your brain weighed 1,360 grams. Three times what your heart weighed. And your aorta, it was smooth and glistening. Teeth, hemorrhagic. A laceration on your left eyebrow. Cuts on your lower lip and chin area. Rigor mortis present in the upper and lower extremities. A contusion on the chest, and a broken right ankle, which somehow seemed beside the point.

And yet, I used to sit up at night, saying your name, waiting for you to appear before me, waiting for you to turn into Kathy again. Waiting for you to say something. Just one little thing. A simple "hello" would have sufficed.

But it was only silence that followed. And this silence made me feel so stupid. Your silence, it has always been the most perfect punishment.

— from Notes On Your Sudden Disappearance by Alison Espach