• Friends are a problem for me, always have been. Someone wrote that friends come in and out of your life like waiters at a diner, and that no doubt accurate description has always bothered me. For a long time, I prided myself on keeping in touch with friends from grammar school, high school, college—and eventually lost touch with more and more of them, feeling guilty about each one. At the same time, I’m uncomfortable with overt displays of friendship, even as I tear up at the finale of “It’s a Wonderful Life.” My father, who had exactly four close friends over his entire life (not counting his best friend, my mother) was the same way exactly. So I can blame him.
• It’s hard to gauge heartfelt condolences from the pro forma variety, isn’t it? I’m hearing on Facebook from some people who have mostly ignored me for years. I know this is a ritual of civilization that is important for re-establishing our commonality and bonds as human beings. Yet it sure seems weird that it takes a tragedy to activate the impulse.
• One of my oldest friends heard about Grace and announced that he was going to drive down from Connecticut to help me cope with everything unless I ordered him not to. So he’s coming. I have a few friends who are like that, just a few. I suppose nobody has too many more, friends who come to one’s aid because they want to and not because they feel obligated.
• None of the above in any way diminishes my genuine gratitude for the lovely and caring condolences (and even flowers!) I have received   from many of you on EA and privately. I have only met a handful of you face-to-face, after all—and one of the few I ended up banning from the blog. You have no obligations to me: the fact that you would express what you have touches me greatly. I am on the cusp of descending into an all-time orgy of second-guessing and self-doubt, but so far, at least, you have kept me out of the abyss.

Added: I just had my first conversation discussing Grace’s passing with someone who should have felt close to her after a life-long, supposedly close family relationship. I might as well have been relaying a baseball score. By any normal calculus, my wife’s death should have affected this individual nearly as much as it does me. Yet in our conversation I’d guess 25% of her contribution was laughter. (I’m not that funny.)

None of this was exactly a surprise to me after many years of interactions with this woman, but it does give me some insight into Grace’s seemingly inexplicable insecurity and anxiety. It took a great deal of restraint for me to avoid asking, “What is wrong with you?” I know—defensive reactions, everybody deals with grief differently, blattily blah (as Grace used to say).

I really don’t think she cares. She’s a sociopath.