After He Died

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Your husband was not the man you thought he was.

Exhausted, Paula fell to the floor, her mind unable to grasp what she had just read. Her husband; the man she was with for three decades was up to ... what? A young, pretty woman had given her this. Was Thomas having an affair?

Nonsense. She threw the note away from her.

Thomas was a lot of things, but a philanderer? Sure, they’d grown apart the last few years, but he was always truthful with her, or so it felt. Her Thomas? Having an affair? The ground tilted. But why else would that young woman go to all that trouble? Attending his funeral, slipping a note into her pocket? She tried to think of all the things those three sentences might be about, but that was all she could come up with. They’d been having an affair. That was it, surely. And then her mind began to run away from her. Perhaps she’d had a child with him?

She could see a desperate mother going through those actions at a funeral if it meant getting something for her offspring. If only the drugs weren’t cloaking everything in a heavy veil, she might be able to make sense of all of this.

In a few hours the sun would rise and the streetlights would be switched off. People would go about their day, locked into the hamster wheels of their own thoughts. Mindless people working for stuff they didn’t really need but wanted with a desire that was unholy, probably viewing everything through the lens of a smartphone, because only then could it exist.

And how much she wanted to be one of them. Not to have this ache.

Nobody does anything real anymore, she thought. Strength is nothing more than a display: an act. Nobody wants to be vulnerable. Nobody wants you to be vulnerable. Your son and husband die and nobody really cares. The world shifts but stays the same and your home, your anchor, isn’t where you left it.