The Women in Black

As the light faded, the women started to arrive. The room slowly filled with female figures of all ages, shapes and sizes. Some were melancholy, carrying their bodies like a heavy burden. Others were lighter, smiled easier and gave a discreet chuckle at a whispered inappropriate joke. Some brought their young children along and spent much energy in trying to contain their uncontainable energy.

All the women were in black; the color of mourning.

It was the custom. They had to be there. They had to wear black. They had to make the expected utterances of condolence. Each woman gauged the length of time she was to stay. Not too short that it seemed disrespectful, but only as long as the strength of the relationship to the bereaved necessitated. Family stayed longest, acquaintances shortest, friends vacillated between the two.

Two of the women present wore their grief like a second skin. It clung to them. They were unable to peel it off like they did the black dresses they wore at the end of the day; black armor kept in closets for just such occasions. Their grief seeped into their very cells, covering their insides with a black soot that would take years to remove, if ever.

One of the women was the official bearer of his name; she was the bereaved Wife. She had the right to her grief. She had the acknowledgment of the crowd congregating around her, shaking her hand, pressing her to their bosoms, whispering soothing words into her ear. They saw her. What they did not see was the depth of her sadness, the width of her pain, the length of her tears. What they did not know was that she had lost him long before he died. She mourned him long before his heart gave up trying. She suffered his absence before his demise. His heart had stopped beating for her many years ago. She had lost him then, but not entirely; not entirely. He may have strayed, but he was on a leash. She had the last laugh, or the last sob, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was that she, she, not the Other Woman had kept him by her side. It was a slow and painful revenge, but she extracted it with a perverse pleasure. Her gratification was in knowing that she made him a little unhappier every day. It served him right for all the pain he put her through. Now, he is dead, he took away even that little jolt of satisfaction. She finally let go of the rope and fell into the darkness of black.

The other woman was exactly that: The Other Woman. The Other Woman, a stranger to his name, sat quietly at the back of the room, drenched in sadness. She wore the black of mourning on the inside. All was black. Where her heart had been was now just gaping hole. She had no idea how she was going to go on. She was the stranger who was his home. She was the silent one to whom his soul spoke. She was the one in the shadows of his life, but who inhabited his thoughts. Still, she was the Other Woman, relegated to the back of the room. No one pressed her hand nor consoled her for the end of her life. No one knew who she really was, not even The Wife.

They met two years ago, and he quickly became the center of everything. Now, with him gone, he took all the light that was, and left her steeped in darkness. The Other Woman stayed the appropriate length of an acquaintance, then dragged her sorrow out into the street. She, the one who knew him most, the one who loved him most, the one whose life has just come to a halt, stayed the length of an almost-stranger and took herself back to her home where she could grieve him properly; where she could pour a glass of Cognac for them both and cry in his arms. He, only he, would know how to console her.