The fallen tree forces us back to the car. We pile in, a shivering heap of fear and weariness. The engine hums and warm air pours out of the vents, but we can’t go farther with a tree in front of us. We’ll have to turn around.

I feel like I’m floating above my own body, somewhere high above the car. From this distance, I can see us like the psychological experiment Josh talked about when we first set out. It’s like this whole ordeal is nothing more than the worst nightmare we could collectively conjure. From here, I can almost pretend none of this is real.

Logically, I know this weird numbness won’t last. This is classic disassociation—my brain’s gift, letting me float away from the harsh reality to keep myself from falling to pieces. I read about this in a grief brochure after Phoebe died. Logically, I should be grateful for this feeling, because, as Phoebe’s hospice nurse told us, numbness is a gift. It keeps us moving and helps us to survive the things that feel unsurvivable.

I should trust the logic in this, but logic has failed me before.

Logically, my aunt wouldn’t have ever gotten sick. Not Phoebe. Not my never-drank, never-smoked, always-ate-her-greens-and-did-her-yoga aunt. She was strong and healthy. She was a woman you’d expect to live to ninety-three, the one we were sure would die peacefully in her sleep with the full moon rising and crickets singing her home.

Logically, that’s what should have happened. That’s the story that makes sense.

But the story that’s true is different.

Phoebe breathed her last at fifty-one years old. She gurgled and groaned and rattled away minute by minute in a yellow-walled hospital room that smelled like disinfectant and death. A room that seemed as eaten and worn by cancer as her body.

Losing Phoebe taught me that when your world falls to pieces, your brain will not keep you moving. Your brain will shut down to a low static hum. Your heart will tear itself in half and ache until you’re sure you’ll die. Until some part of you wishes you could.

It’s your instincts that will keep you alive.

Beneath the push-push-push rhythm of blood carrying oxygen to your veins, there is something else. An animal directive that will put food in your mouth when you can’t imagine eating, that will stop at the coffee line in the hospital because your body remembers the need for sustenance even when the rest of you forgets.