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I don't know how long I was sitting there before people started
going up to speak. It took me a while to realize that Kenneth had
already died (I didn't need to see him of all people). And Marge, too.
They weren't there. Since it wasn't Marge who told me, like she did with
Mona (who I only met once), she rnust've been dead already.

I don't even know what people were saying. If! wasn't looking
at the floor, I was staring into the center of that urn. I was hoping that
Diane would still want to take it with her. I didn't need that around me
or in my house. I have enough ashes to keep me company.

§

Why can't these Davids switch? We'd get more books. We'd
have someone navigating what it means to live now and tell us what
it means to live in this century as opposed to the last one. We'd have a
chance to learn something.

But I wouldn't mind David living forever if that meant I'd
never get a call from Diane. That I'd never have to step foot in Virginia.

I don't believe in closure. I think that's a made-up term. If
something really meant that much to you, then it's hard to really move
on. How can there be one moment, or phrase, or fleeting fucking
epiphany that makes everything all right again? Closure means that
something can be fixed. Well, sometimes there was nothing there to be
fixed.

Some relationships are in blood only. Ifyou don't know a
person, how can you be expected to feel something real?

I don't want to start a relationship with the recently deceased.
I'd rather not know someone at all than pretend that I do. It's only an
image, a shade, of what might have been-

Of what I never wanted, what other people wanted for me.

§

"Please understand that you have my sympathies;' and I had to
take a breath before I could say,"but I'm not fucking going to Virginia.
I'm sorry."

She cried some more. Maybe I shouldn't have been so curt. I
needed this conversation to end, but I still lack the nerve to hang up the
phone on a grieving woman.

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