I had no idea a person was so many things, that her abduction from my life would leave such numerous and varied voids. It’s not hearing her voice, it’s not smelling her hair, it’s not seeing her things in new arrangements in her closet or on her nightstand, it’s not seeing her car move for months, it’s not seeing her favorite foods diminish in the refrigerator or pantry, it’s not being called on my various omissions or commissions. It’s realizing that it doesn’t matter any more if the sheets are tight and wrinkle-free on the bed, that no one leaves the cap off the toothpaste any more, that no one says, “What’s wrong?” if I don’t speak for half an hour, that no one’s reading all those Humane Society newsletters and Pottery Barn catalogs that keep coming in the mail. It’s realizing that this is forever and still not believing it. It’s knowing I could pour a bucket of purple paint over the stair rail into the hallway below and nobody would be upset. It’s knowing I could bring home ten dozen red roses and a string quartet and nobody would be happy. It’s hard and it’s relentless and it’s got more facets than a crateful of engagement rings. And every time I know, I just KNOW, that I’ve plumbed the final depths of it, I find some new trench, some new surprise.

All I can say is if you have someone you can share with, someone who cares about your life and wants to be involved in it in some way, any way, then share. Share, share, share. If a day comes when you’ve got no one to share that day with, nor the next nor the next, that’s when you will know what you don’t want to know. That even the best life can be hollowed out in a moment or in a week or in four months.

One may be the loneliest number, but there’s an equation that’s lonelier still:

2 - 1 = 1.

Somebody ought to come up with a new way of doing math.