Julian Barnes

But before that two-year period had elapsed, I discovered the reason why I couldn't kill myself.

I wasn't allowed to kill myself.

And that's because I was the best rememberer of my wife.

I knew her and I had celebrated her in all her forms and in all her nature.

And I had loved her deeply.

And I realized that if I killed myself, then I would in a way be killing her too.

I'd be killing the best memories of her.

They would disappear from the world.

And I just wasn't wouldn't allow myself to do that.

And at that point, it just turned on its head.

And I, I knew I'd have to live with grief for quite a long time.

But I didn't think an answer to the grief was killing myself.

Well, I can't really speak for her, but she once said to me,

when we'd been together for, I don't know, two or three years, she said, I love the way you love Pat.

And Pat had been dead for 13 years or something.

So she is remarkably open and realistic.

It doesn't mean I love her any less.

It's just that I think it's right to remember and to write about the dead.

Well, I used to believe, as I think most people do when they're young, that memory was somehow something rather stable, that it was like

You had something happen to you and you wanted to remember it.