Dear Life

"He had often wondered what difference it would make.

But the emptiness in place of her was astounding. 

He looked at the nurse in wonder. She thought he was asking her what to do next and she began to tell him. Filling him in. He understood her fine, but was still preoccupied. 

He'd thought it had happened long before with Isabel, but it hadn't. Not until now. 

She had existed and now she did not. Not at all, as if not ever. And people hurried around, as if this outrageous fact could be overcome by making sensible arrangements. He, too, obeying the customs, signing where he was told to sign, arranging - as they said - for the remains.

What an excellent word - "remains." Like something left to dry out in sooty layers in the cupboard. 

And before long he found himself outside, pretending that he had as ordinary and good a reason as anybody else to put one foot ahead of the other. 

What he carried with him, all he carried with him, was a lack, something like a lack of air, of proper behavior in his lungs, a difficulty that he supposed would go on forever."

- Leaving Maverly, Dear Life, Alice Munro

...if nothing else, this passage is a lesson in the power of simplicity.