she can smell him and the smell so strong and so familiar in such an unfamiliar place sets her back blots out all other senses leaves her staggering and all the memories sweep through afresh that he had loved her that he had turned away from her that he had forgotten her that he had died all of it all their lives together rushing back just as it has done so many times in these days since she found him crumpled at his desk in the study and she 'd hoped that it would hurt a little less each time but the opposite seems to be true it hurts more the void is larger and emptier and aches more and it feels like it is just going to get worse and worse until it swallows her up god she can not bear it to have lost him like that lost him over and over it seems sometimes that the past two decades have been a series of loses in sequence feeling him slip through her fingers a little further washed a little further out to sea she hates to think it does not want to admit it but in some ways she can only be glad that he died and of course she hates herself for thinking such a thing .