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coping (more or less) 239 She Considers Widowhood Natasha Sajé in the same way she’s always prepared herself—a book for the long wait, chestnut flour for the cake she’ll make when it’s cold again. Maybe she’ll lose weight, like her mother, having no one to eat with, and finds it odd to think this, but she can’t help the dog of her consciousness racing ahead and then back to her side. So much for be here now. What will she do when a pipe breaks or the cat brings in a live bird. Her heart pounds. She’ll call someone, she tells herself, that’s all. The habit of thinking ahead is not seemly now, she knows, as it signals an ability to go on without the one she loves best and it prefigures readiness like a closet full of canned goods. She avoids a metaphor for love in the same way that she avoids thinking about other aspects of the future but she feels guilty for spending energy thinking at all. She should be channeling brainwaves to make him well or just looking into his eyes. If he dies she’ll surely regret not having spent every possible minute with him. Married to the idea of being half of a pair, after thirty years, reading each other’s minds, feelings emanating 240 the widows’ handbook like sound waves, what would it be like to lose that. How much she’s learned through love about everything, including that quadrant of self visible only to others but exceptionally accessed through the one who knows her best. She considers that square closed to her. Maybe she’ll get rid of the television. Maybe she’ll move. ...

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