He glanced back at the pantry mirror again and tried to smile, but the smile was forced. Ida had told him decades ago that he wore every tale of woe on his face. After hearing that, he made an effort to hide his natural expressions. He didn’t want to be held accountable—even to Ida—for every emotion he experienced, past or present. Ida was one of those persons who believed that truth should and would be told on every occasion. But truth was a strain, and he had kept more than a few private thoughts to himself.

One of his truths now was the heaviness that had burdened him the past year. As months went by, the weight had become more leaden. He didn’t know what to do about this and assumed there was nothing he could do. There was no one around with whom he could share these thoughts. Ida had been taken from him swiftly, unexpectedly. He’d had little time to prepare. He could not have predicted what his life would be like after she was gone. How could he have known that the initial feelings of grief would go on and on? What he felt, when he admitted this to himself, was a disturbing sense of upheaval. A sense of being tossed in a fathomless sea, a sea of memory and shadow. Sometimes he was certain that Ida needed him, that she was calling his name from another part of the house. Sometimes, without thinking, he answered and called back.

And that was not all. There were moments when he had the distinct impression that she was in the house, just beyond his peripheral vision. He turned his head quickly, as if he might catch a glimpse of her now.

There was no one there.

Well, what about this discussion group? He unwrapped the chicken, grateful that it was still hot, and removed the lid from the potato salad container. He sprinkled pepper—no salt—over his food and sat at the table. After Ida died, he had moved into her chair, not wanting to stare at her empty place. He felt better doing that, and Ida’s chair afforded a view out the side window. He told himself he was seeing what she would be seeing if she were alive. He thought again of the notice at Marvin’s and removed the strip of paper from his wallet. He stared at the date, time and place. Next week at Cassie’s, Tuesday night. He and Ida used to stop in there after a movie or a play. They had enjoyed sitting together over a cup of coffee, or occasionally a glass of wine, discussing the performance they’d seen.

Maybe he would go. He’d been listening to CBC Radio at Rigmarole one morning and had heard about meetings at death cafés: groups of people who met for coffee or tea and discussed ideas and fears and beliefs in hopes of becoming comfortable with the topic of death while making the most of their lives. He’d also listened to a program about grief walks on a talk show. Over the years, with the radio on in the background, he’d acquired knowledge he wouldn’t have been able to invent. Perhaps the meeting at Cassie’s next week would be a death café. There might even be cake; that’s what was uniformly served, according to the people interviewed on CBC. He hadn’t had a decent slice of cake since the weeks following Ida’s death, when food was dropped off at the side door.