Sarah is a nice person, and I don’t mean bland or a do-gooder. She is mostly good-natured and generous. She laughs a lot, thinks the best of people, and is slow to judge. She was all of these things when I married her. After the loss, not so much. I know she fought the bitterness, but she couldn’t shake it until she left here for good. At least, that’s what I thought I observed. Escaping the farm, and me, saved her. It let her leave some things behind that she thought she couldn’t; things she believed couldn’t be separated from the loss, like rage at how other people could live such happy, undamaged lives. People such as our friends. Turns out, moving away from friends and community helped her dump the bitterness. That’s what I think anyway. Of course, I don’t know much about Sarah’s inner life these days, so I could be talking through my hat. Sarah might be still as screwed up as I am. But I remember the first time she called me after she’d left. There was a tone in her voice I hadn’t heard for so long I didn’t recognise it until later. I’m pretty sure that sound was hope.

In the past months I have spent a lot of time on my own. Sometimes I have gone weeks without talking to anyone in anything other than a perfunctory manner — bought groceries, ordered fuel, that sort of thing. I don’t answer the phone, and I avoid going out. I really don’t do much of anything. I mean to, but it never really happens.

Often I don’t notice how much time I have spent without human contact. So much so that the sound of my own voice can startle me. I will be driving along and a thought will put itself into words, and I will wonder who is talking, and then realise it is me. At other times in my life I would have hated to be alone, and would have found excuses to go and talk to people: at the pub; in town; call friends; or just flag someone down on the road. But when being with other people just makes the pain worse, it is easier to set a lone course. And when you want to be alone, after a while you either get used to yourself or go crazy.

All my life I have been anchored here. I have known where I fitted. Wherever I went, people who didn’t know me could always place me: because of where I lived, because I was someone’s son, grandson, friend, then husband, and then father. Now it is all gone, and I am untethered, unplaceable. If I met myself in the supermarket, I wouldn’t know who I was. I never imagined I could be so totally isolated. The farm is the only thing that defines me.