I think if you could feel my hospital room as I feel it, in the arms of this moment⁠—you’d be quite comfortable and not afraid.

Outside, dawn has washed the sky, which means I’m probably going to live another day, giving us time to get back to the story of how I eventually told Hadley. Remember, we do not wake from dreams into reality, but into other dreams.

8.

Three weeks after the diagnosis, Hadley still didn’t know. When I returned to see my doctor for different medication, she suggested I find an end-of-life therapist. This seemed exciting because it meant I wasn’t the only one. There was an entire industry based on terminal illness.

Fantastic!

During our third session, Carol asked me about suicide.

Of course, you remember I had discounted this as an option long before, for the simple reason that it’s not the dead who suffer, but the living.

“I was in bed. In the country. The window was open. I could hear the sea.”

“How did that make you feel, Max? Hearing the sea?”

“Scared.”

“Would you be open to exploring why?”

“Because things we had experienced together would always remind her of my absence.”

“That’s right. After your passing, she will have to reinterpret everything⁠—learn to see it again without you.”

“Will that help?”

“Only if she allows the old associations to recede. She has to want to give you up.”

I remember looking at my shoes then. I would never buy another pair. The shoes and clothes and glasses and hats I owned were the only ones I would ever have.

“So, ten years from now, my wife could be a completely different person? One who might not even love me anymore?”

Carol acknowledged my pain with her eyes. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” She passed me a tissue box. “If Hadley is to survive your loss, Max, she’ll have to start again, or go back to the time before she knew you⁠—and take it from there.”

“It seems unfair.”

“That we suffer, Max?”

“No, that suffering is contagious.”

“That takes us to a deeper truth few people will ever confront.”

“Which is what?”

“That only the fortunate suffer. Most are damned to indifference or blinded by the fantasy of life after death.”

“I think there is life after death.”

“Would you be comfortable telling me about that, Max?”

“We don’t remember, of course, but our life energy gets recycled.”

“Like reincarnation?”

“Yes, but without karma. That just seems like another attempt to control the living.”

“Interesting,” Carol said, smiling, “but not very consoling if you don’t remember.”

“To be honest, I think it’s better that we forget, otherwise we would be consumed by desires. The loss of Max at death is akin to an act of love. Because it’s memory that makes the living suffer.”

“Are you religious, Max?”