Julian Barnes
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And I thought, of course, you can kill yourself.
That's permissible.
It's not unforgivable in my morality.
I'm extremely unhappy.
I'm bereft.
I'm lost, though I have many friends.
I think I said, or a friend said to me, I can't remember which way around it was, give it two years.
I said, okay, I'll give it two years.
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.