The smoke from her cigarette mixes with her breath as she exhales. She’s close to twice my age, but in this moment, our loss is what connects us. As the smoke dissipates, her brown hair comes back into view. Warmth from the fire in front of us wraps itself around our bodies; it holds us tighter than a father saying goodbye. The chatter from the people at the bar around us becomes almost deafening. Then, in a moment of clarity, it quickly fades from my ear. She hesitates for a moment, but finally asks her question:

“So, does it ever get any easier?”

​

The beer bottle in my hand rises to the occasion, gives me a quick kiss on the lips, and finds a resting place on my knee. There are many things that go through my head. Does it ever get any easier? I wonder. After these six long years, can I honestly say I feel any differently? Have I moved on, or have I just forgotten? Is there anything one can say to truly comfort someone from this? My brain catches up with the present as I realize I haven’t answered her yet.

​

“No,” I speak in words as hard as cannon balls, “but you start to make room for it. It becomes a part of you. To tell you the truth, I’ve pushed it so far out of my mind that I sometimes forget he was ever even there. It’s not really an absence, more like something just blipped out of existence. I’m still trying to figure out if that’s a good way to go about it or not.”

​

She sits back in her chair. I don’t think it was the answer she was looking for, but vague words are a coward’s crutch. She raises her beer to her lips as well, receiving the same fleeting kiss. The cold February night cuts through me, but the ferocity of emotion inside her begins to burn me to my core. It’s dark, but the look on her face reaches across the room and illuminates my eyes. The look is all too familiar - she’s starting to understand.

​

If it was any other night, we would have never spoken more than a few sentences to each other, but life is full of abnormal circumstances, and I find myself outside of a bar, drawn into a conversation with a stranger. She wants me to tell her everything is going to be alright. She wants me to console her. What she wants is something I can never give her; broken hearts splinter everything they touch.

“I will tell you this,” my cannons have reloaded, “your loss is not what defines you. A day will come when you find you haven’t thought about it much. Then another day will come when you realize you haven’t thought about it in a few days. A few weeks, a few months.” Her eyes begin to light up. “Then a year will go by and you’ll tally up the amount of times you’ve thought about it. It will be less than you imagined. It won’t make you feel any better. In fact, it will make you feel worse. You’ll feel like you’ve forgotten and you’ll be right back to square one.”

​

The light in her eyes dims. She kisses her old friend once more and slumps back into her chair. Above her in the darkness, a great horned owl shifts its weight on a tree branch.

​

I prepare my final volley of ammunition. “But this will strengthen you. You will always come back full circle, and your heart will harden because of it. You will be slightly different each time you return, and eventually you’ll think you’re going backwards, but the beginning looks different this time and it feels easier. Then, when you start again, you will feel tenderness rather than bitterness. You will make your peace, but it will be made by you alone.”

​

“How long ago did yours die?” she pulls on her cigarette - the last kiss.

“Six years ago.”

​

She shakes her head. “I lost mine three months ago. It’s funny, when you’re younger you think they’ll be around forever. As you age you begin to realize that one day they’re going to fly away. Yet when it happens, you’re still surprised.” She stands up, puts her cigarette out on the ground, and throws it into the fire. “Thank you for your kind words.”

 

She disappears into the warmth of the bar inside, the owl above her takes off into the night, and I never see her again.