In the aftermath, all I felt was a kind of blankness. I buried him in one of our potted plants on the patio, in the shadow of a succulent.

3.

A few weeks after the hummingbird’s death, I sat in a dingy conference room, staring at the backs of strangers. Grieving strangers. When I had originally searched for grief support groups online, what came up were twelve-step programs, ranging from ones that helped people who loved too much to ones for people who couldn’t find a way to love at all. Programs for people who looked for things outside of themselves to save them, or to obliterate them. And then I found this.

I had become exhausted by a kind of grief over the last few months, surprised by the physicality of it; prone to naps after reading e-mails from my parents about necessary visits that I could not bring myself to respond to. I could spend weekend hours catatonic in bed, staring at the wall. I tried to imagine what I could place directly across from where I slept so I could be calmed back to sleep instead of overcome by dread.

Every night I would open my eyes and listen to the night birds calling to each other, then gently slide out of bed to sit on the couch and watch hours of TV on mute while googling whatever popped into my head. The mockingbirds singing outside my window were the soundtrack to my insomnia.

One night, I found myself googling how long it took for hummingbird bodies to decompose, which led me to forums about the afterlife and websites devoted to practical advice for living life and facing death, and, finally, a training program that taught people how to help other people die.

We would serve as exit guides for the dying. I had no idea such a job existed.

As I filled out the application, I was startled to hear the unfamiliar drip of rain outside. I walked to the window to see the first rain of the year and wondered how I could have forgotten what something so ordinary sounded like.

Bobby never stirred when I crawled out of bed. We were no longer the type to be tangled up together at night. At that hour, channels were flooded with infomercials for “As Seen on TV” gadgets to improve your life and give you optimal health. Men with bulging muscles in too-tight shirts pressed Liquefy on blenders full of “superfoods” and immunity boosters on a loop every night. They crammed kale and carrots into juicers and stuck their fingers in the froth to illustrate how absolutely no nutrients were lost before pouring the liquid into their mouths.