Danielle Steel - Impossible

“Is this really happening? I can't believe it. I keep waiting for someone to tell me it's all a terrible joke. But it isn't, is it?” Marcie shook her head.

They got through the day, with Sasha looking and feeling like a zombie, and trying to comfort her children. They finally ate pizza that night, and nothing else. Tatianna went to sleep in her old bedroom, Xavier went out with friends and came home drunk. Sasha sat in the living room staring into space. She couldn't stand going back to their bedroom, all she wanted was him. And when she finally went to bed that night, too exhausted to sleep, she could smell his aftershave on his pillow, and burrowed her face in it and sobbed. Marcie stayed and slept on the couch, faithful friend that she was. She spent hours that night calling their friends and telling them about the funeral. She called the gallery in Paris. Everyone there was coming.

Marcie ordered the flowers, Sasha picked the music. Friends began to drop by and offered to help. Ushers were chosen from among Arthur's partners and best friends. Sasha felt as though she would die when she had to pick his clothes. And somehow they all got to the funeral dressed, and on time. People came to the house afterward. And long after, Sasha admitted that she remembered absolutely nothing. Not the music or the flowers, or the people who were there. She had no recollection of who had come to the apartment. She had appeared normal and sane, and as composed as was possible. But essentially, she was in shock. And so were her children. They clung to each other like people off a ship that sank, and were drowning. And Sasha was. The hardest part came the day after. Real life, without Arthur. The day-to-day horror of living without him. The pain of it was beyond belief. Like surgery without anesthesia, Sasha could not believe what it was like waking up every day, knowing she would not see him and never would again. Everything that had once been dear and wonderful and easy was now agonizing and excruciatingly hard. There were no rewards to getting through the days without him, no point getting up in the morning, nothing to look forward to, no reason to stay alive, except for her children.

Xavier went back to London after two weeks. He called his mother often. Tatianna had gone back to work after a week. Sasha called her every day, and most of the time, Tatianna just cried whenever she heard her mother's voice. The only comfort Sasha got, other than the discreet sympathy of her employees and the staunch support of Marcie, was when she talked to friends who had gone through the same thing. She hated talking to them, and most of the time it depressed her, but at least they told her honestly what to expect. And none of it sounded good.

Alana Applebaum, whose husband had been Arthur's friend, and whose birthday Sasha had missed because Arthur's funeral had been the day before, told her the first year had been torture from beginning to end. And sometimes it still was. But after the anniversary marking the first year, she had made a concerted effort to go out with other men. She said that most of them were jerks, and she hadn't met a decent one yet, but at least she wasn't at home, crying and alone. Her theory was that no matter how bad a man she went out with was, it was better than being alone.

One of Sasha's closest friends in Paris, who had lost her husband three years before in a skiing accident in Val d'Isère, saw it differently. She said she'd rather be alone than with a jerk. She was forty-five years old, had been widowed at forty-two, and said there just were no decent men available, all the good ones were married. The others were idiots, or worse. She insisted she was happier alone. But Sasha was acutely aware that in the past year or two, she had started drinking too much. And often when she called Sasha to comfort her, having miscalculated the time difference, she had been drunk. She wasn't managing so well, either.

Sasha commented on their calls to Marcie, “Maybe the only way to survive this is to become a drunk.” It was depressing listening to all of them. And the divorcées Sasha knew were no better. They didn't have intolerable grief to live with, and they could hide behind their hatred of their ex-husbands, particularly if they'd been left for other, younger women. It was frightening listening to all of them. As a result, Sasha avoided them, isolated herself, and tried to get lost in her work. Sometimes it helped. Most of the time, it didn't.

The first Christmas without Arthur came and went in a series of large and small agonies. Xavier and Tatianna spent the night with her on Christmas Eve, and by midnight they were all sitting in the living room, sobbing. None of them wanted to open their presents, least of all Sasha. Tatianna had given her a heavy cashmere stole to wear, since Sasha seemed to be cold all the time, probably because she rarely ate or slept. And Xavier gave her a series of art books he knew she wanted. But it wasn't Christmas without Arthur.

The next day both her children went skiing with friends. She took a sleeping pill at eight o'clock on New Year's Eve, and woke up at two o'clock the next afternoon, grateful that she had missed it. She and Arthur had never done anything spectacular on New Year's Eve, but at least he had been there with her.

It was May before she felt even halfway human again. By then, it was seven months since Arthur's death. All she had done since then was travel to Paris once a month, where she sat huddled and freezing in the house at night, finished her work as quickly as possible, and flew back to New York. She delegated as much as possible to both her gallery managers during those months, and she was grateful for their help. Without them, she would have been utterly and totally lost, and nearly was. Sundays were the worst days of all for her, in either city, because she couldn't go to work. She hadn't been to the house in the Hamptons since he died. She didn't want to go back without him, nor did she want to sell it. She just let it sit there, and told her children to use it whenever they wanted. She wasn't going to. She had absolutely no idea what to do with the rest of her life. Other than work, which was now completely devoid of joy for her, but it was the only saving grace she had. The rest looked like a wasteland of despair. She had never felt as lost or without hope in her entire life.

Both of her gallery managers, and even Marcie, were urging her to see friends. She hadn't returned any calls, except for those from the gallery, in months. And even those calls she handed off to others whenever she could. She hadn't wanted to talk to anyone since Arthur died.

In May, she finally felt a little better. Much to her own amazement, she accepted a dinner invitation from Alana in June, and regretted it as soon as she did. She regretted it even more when the night arrived. The last thing she wanted was to put on clothes and go out. Marcie had told her that Arthur would want her to go out. He would have been devastated if he could see the state she was in. She had lost nearly twenty pounds. People who didn't know her well said she looked fabulous, and had no idea why. To them, being emaciated from grief looked fashionable and trim.

So, on a fateful night in June, she went out for the first time. She wore a black silk pantsuit and high heels, and her hair straight back in a bun. The diamond earrings she wore had been a gift from Arthur the Christmas before he died. She cried when she put them on. And her clothes hung on her. She was rail thin, and everything she owned was suddenly too big.

The dinner party she went to started out more pleasantly than she had expected it to, and most of the faces were familiar. Alana had yet another new beau by then, and this one seemed unexpectedly decent. He chatted with Sasha for a little while, and she discovered that he was a collector of contemporary art, and had been a client of her gallery once or twice. The agony for Sasha came when she discovered that Alana had asked him to bring a friend, who launched himself at Sasha during dinner. He was intelligent and might have been interesting, except that he proceeded to interview Sasha, as though she had signed up for computer dating, which she hadn't, and had no intention of doing, now or ever. She knew that Alana had met men on Internet dating services more than once. The thought of it horrified Sasha. She didn't want to date anyone, not this one or any other. She intended to mourn Arthur forever.