Young Widower (17 page)

I might one day become that best part of Katie continuing in the world: wise, centered, empathic. Perhaps I will omit the story
of the death from the witness of the trauma, in order to clarify a sense of the continuing life. The term here, I think, is still
consolation
: to perform the lie that insists meaning, duration, and stability into our very brief lives. The terms of that witness are immoral, unjust, and absolute. I fear both accepting and being judged by them. They make the events of a life arbitrary and Katie’s death meaningless.

In Bucharest, at night, I sometimes knocked on the wooden bedframe as I fell asleep. It was a superstition I had learned from a colleague in Chicago who was fond of mythology. I knocked the wood so that the spirit world would not hear me confessing my worst fears, which, according to the legend, I was required to say out loud, lest they become true. I found it comforting to do this every night until it became a ritual and then a habit, a pattern I could not disrupt without imagining greater consequences for the interruption. Sometimes, I woke in the middle of the night so as not to miss the ritual. When I felt especially vulnerable, I said a short prayer. I rolled over in the bed and clung to Katie, who woke enough to pull my arm across her chest. And then, I fell asleep.

About the Author

John W. Evans
, a recent Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, teaches creative writing at Stanford. His award-winning work appears in
Slate
, the
Missouri Review
,
Z
Y
Z
Z
Y
V
A
, and the
Rumpus
.

Winners of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize

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Young Widower: A Memoir

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