Oh, William

“My second husband, David, died last year, and in my grief for him I have felt grief for William as well. Grief is such a—oh, it is such a solitary thing; this is the terror of it, I think. It is like sliding down the outside of a really long glass building while nobody sees you.”

This passage presents two contradictory feelings. In stating that she feels grief for her first husband, William, while she grieves her second husband, David, Lucy reveals that grief is an empathetic state that can have multiple applications and can connect her to different people. However, she then expresses the opposite notion when she describes grief as a “solitary thing” which makes her invisible in her tragedy. The metaphor of sliding down a long glass building is a dramatic hyperbole. A person’s isolation in this state means that no one can help or identify with them.

“He took heart in the fact that he could pass many people—the old man with a walker, or a woman who used a cane, or even just a person his age who seemed to move more slowly than he did—and this made him feel healthy and alive and almost invulnerable in a world of constant traffic.”

This passage sets up William’s good health and vigor for his age. He compares himself with others who are on the point of decrepitude and finds himself in better shape. The feeling of being “almost invulnerable” in a world of “constant traffic” indicates William’s feeling of control over his body and by extension, his life. This will prove ironic as the “traffic” that affects more chaotic lives than his will soon disrupt his sense of order.