“Sounds familiar.”
“Does it?”
I looked at my hands.
“When my father died, I started working every hour I could. I thought if I stayed busy enough, I wouldn’t have time to miss him.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while.”
“And then?”
“Then I realized I was missing him anyway. I was just too tired to notice.”
Diane nodded.
She didn’t offer me a lesson.
She didn’t tell me I was brave.
She simply sat beside me and let the truth remain what it was.
Before I left, I asked her a question I’d been thinking about all afternoon.
“Do you ever get lonely?”
She looked toward the brick wall surrounding the garden.
“Yes.”
The honesty surprised me.
“But loneliness isn’t always a problem that needs solving,” she continued. “Sometimes it’s just the price of having loved someone and being willing to live without pretending they can be replaced.”
I thought about Tasha.
