With time, you forget that he had irritating sides.
Every small preference, every particular characteristic, every favourite food, every song he went on about — and there is the blanket he would let fall to the floor, because he was always too warm.
He was a person in this world, and he conducted himself and lived and got up and went and fell asleep without giving you the slightest hint that one day he would be gone.
The day after you lost him, you discovered you had become a symbol.
People look at you differently. They restrain themselves near you. They handle you carefully.
You hate it.
But you play the game.
We all avert our gaze from you, because we do not want to know about this world the thing that you know — that this world is logical, until it is not.
And there is no explanation, no compensation, no medicine and no cure. There is no answer to why it had to be him and not the neighbours' son, or somebody's husband, or that strange student you sometimes see at the bus stop.
The aloneness lashes you nastily, particularly when you want so much to tell him how wretched and wearying and lonely life is, and still, still — there is no better alternative.
You only want to tell him some triviality of the day, to pass him on your way to another room, and simply to know that he is present.
But he is not there.
And he is never coming back.
I do not know what went through his head, but I would guess he would have wanted you to live.
So live, please. However you want to.
That is not advice and it is not consolation, and I am aware that both are useless here. It is only the one thing the people around you cannot say to you, because they are frightened of getting it wrong — and so it goes unsaid, and you are left to work out on your own whether you are allowed.