Tombstones covered the dale, the smooth marble surfaces bright. She had spent days here as a teenager, though not out of any awareness of mortality. Like every adolescent, she intended to live forever.

He forestalls death with an orange pill bottle, just a few more weeks, fifty pills at a time.

I narrate the story but he dies off-stage between commercials. A washing machine ad later, we are dressed in our funereal best. We sniffle and indulge in product placement for Kleenex. The credits roll.

She could not keep his death in her head, like when she tried to imagine the infiniteness of the universe and nearly swooned at the vastness of the thought.

She had thought he was dead, or at least not totally alive, and you could not still be dating someone you believe had an autopsy, so it was not really cheating.

The body tries to stop the mind from killing itself, no matter the cost. It is only the lack of strength, the fatigue that lets the jumpers fall at last.