We are all going to die. Nothing could be more inevitable, or true. But why do we die, and what happens after? Something happened to me once which gave me an insight into those questions.
It was a tragedy when my friend Vincent''s wife died. He was much older than her, and so as well as feeling great grief, he also suffered a sort of baffled surprise than had died before him. They had married in 1876, when he was forty and she was twenty-five, and had enjoyed over twenty years together. They were very different people, which is perhaps why they got along so well.
Vincent was by no means a weak or passive man, but he could sometimes seem so when compared with Alison. She was boisterous and dominant, thought not a tyrant. She loved Vincent very much, and there''s no doubt she made him happy, but there was one thing about Alison which I disliked: her ferocious possessiveness. Despite the fact that he was devoted to her, despite the fact that he was incapable of loving anyone else, she became jealous for the smallest reason.
If Vincent chatted for too long with a female acquaintance, Alison would march up to him and whisk him off. It was unnecessary and rude, but I suppose most marriages have their peculiarities, and this was theirs.
It was Vincent''s nature just to put up with the way she behaved, but the consequence was that they eventually offended nearly everyone they knew and, as the years passed, they became more and more isolated and dependent on each other. When Alison died at the age of forty-nine, after an illness lasting about two months, Vincent had few friends left. Perhaps the only reason that he was still in contact with me was that I hadn''t married, so there was no partner Alison could offend. Even I hadn''t seen him for some years, and didn''t regard myself as a close friend any more.
I was surprised – embarrassed, even – when, after the funeral, he asked me to stay with him for a while. The idea didn''t appeal to me. And was I really the only friend he could muster? However, I felt that I had a little choice but to agree. Someone had to keep him company, at least for a few days, and yet it almost seemed to stress how alone he was without his wife.