He is better in a crisis than in a slow-building problem. Acute situations clarify him; diffuse, structural problems — the kind that accumulate gradually and require sustained attention to address — tend to get deferred in favor of whatever is most immediately urgent. This is relevant.
He has, at intervals throughout our marriage, surprised me with something that reminded me of the person I first knew. A joke at exactly the right moment. A gesture that was personal and particular in a way that couldn’t have come from someone who wasn’t paying attention. The understanding, arriving unexpectedly, that he is still there, underneath whatever the current configuration of pressures has made of him.
I married him because I believed he was a good man who was trying to be better. I still believe both of those things. The question I’ve been sitting with since the trip is whether trying is enough, and whether better is a direction we’re still moving in.
## The Community Center
Elaine went to the grief group on Tuesday, as she’d told me she would.
She called Nathan afterward. I didn’t listen to the call, but he told me about it afterward, in the kitchen, while he was making tea.
“She said it was harder than she expected,” he said. “Being in a room with other people who’d lost spouses. It made her feel Gerald’s absence more acutely, not less.”
“That seems like it might be the point,” I said.
He looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that the grief is already there. She’s carrying it. What she hasn’t had is a place to put it down, even temporarily, with people who understand the weight of it. The group doesn’t take the grief away. It gives her somewhere to be with it that isn’t her son’s house.”