DEAR LISA | JENLISA

ELEVEN

LISA

Month three

May 1
***

THE WHOLE WORLD stops when a young person dies. At least, the world you live in.

At first, everyone you know rallies around you, stunned and grieving, milling around. The solidarity of loss binds people together. No one can imagine moving forward. No one wants to. Stop all the clocks, as the poem instructs.

And time does seem to stop. No one in your world can ever see being happy again. It's an impossibility. Nothing will be the same. Nothing ever should be the same. The world is ruined by her death.

There are the tasks immediately following. The phone calls. The arrangements. The assignments-you'll go to the funeral home while her sister goes to the church, and this other one will order the flowers. There is so much to do, thank God, because your brain cannot accept what's happened, and if you stood still for a second, you might spontaneously explode, like a wineglass shatters with a high note. Your feet are still moving and someone is pushing food and water on you, and another person is coming in now, and your phone is buzzing with texts and calls, and there's another knock on the door.

You put together the photo collages, the PowerPoint that will show during the wake and reception. You'll make the playlist she requested, pick out readings, order food. For a week or two, the world is filled with the details of death. Family huddles close. Her friends are devastated. Her coworkers can barely function. Her doctor calls to check on you. Her nurses come to the funeral.

For a short time, her death makes you the center of so many lives.

And then . . . it trickles off. There are children to be cared for, homes to be cleaned, food to be prepared. The coworkers still have jobs to do. The friends start getting on with their lives.

The stopped clocks start ticking once more.

Two months and one week after Jennie died, that first day came for Lisa. The day when no one called, texted, emailed, dropped by. Not Jisoo, not Ben, not Donna, not Roseanne, not her mother, not Haein, not Bruce the Mighty and Beneficent, not a random former classmate who'd just heard the news.

The first day of her life when her widowed state went unheralded by anyone.

It was obscene. Message received, loud and clear. The world was adjusting to Jennie's absence. Oh, she knew Donna and Jisoo would never get over her, would think of her every day. But Jisoo had a husband and two kids. Donna had a living daughter and two grandchildren. They both worked. They had places to go. Her own mother ran an entire hospital lab, viewed Sumi and Ben as her siblings, belonged to four book clubs and volunteered through her church. But you think she might have called her only child just to check in. A fucking text, maybe, Mom?

No. Nothing.

Lisa waited all day in a state of furious, silent martyrdom, hating herself, hating everyone else. Took the dog for a run. Spoke to no one. Checked her phone every ten minutes, then every five, then restarted it in case it had a glitch.

Still nothing.

She could, of course, reach out to someone. Ben would go for a walk with her; all she had to do was ask, and they'd be at the Botanical Center or driving to Boston. It would be better than this ridiculous, pointless anger. But this was a test. A test of them, a test of her.

Everyone failed.

By 8:37 p.m., she hated them all.

Fury was creeping into her head like a disease. A red-out was coming.