After Helena

After the death of Helena, I decided to forgive all my enemies.

We like to think that big decisions are taken step by step, that they are nurtured over time. But time doesn’t nurture anything. It only corrodes, subtracts, wears things out.

I tidied the house, cleared away her things, cleaned her study from top to bottom. A week later I donated all her clothes to a charity. I didn’t take any comfort from this act of goodwill: I did it for me, not for the needy.

I had always imagined that to lose the person one loved would be like entering an interminable emptiness, ushering in a permanent sense of deprivation. When I lost Helena, quite the opposite seemed to happen. I felt closed down. Without objectives, without desires, without fears. As if every day of my life were an extension of something that, in reality, had already ended.

I carried on going to the university, but not to cling to my routine, or my salary. With the savings we had, plus the life-insurance money, I could have requested an extended leave of absence. I continued with my classes only to see whether, with the youthful evidence of the new students, I could manage to convince myself that time kept flowing, that the future existed.