“Hey, hi. How are you doing today?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
Jacqui scrunched up her eyebrows, looking confused. “I’m good. But I heard about your aunt.”
“Yeah. Aunt Keiko.” A motion caught my attention in my peripheral vision, so I turned my head and looked out the window. A cardinal had landed on a tree branch. It looked at me a moment, then flew off again. I sighed. “But I’m fine. Really.”
She put a hand on mine, which I looked down at with a frown. “You can talk to me if you need to.”
The thing is, though, I didn’t know what I needed. But definitely not a hand on mine, definitely not a nostalgic talk about my feelings.
“It’s okay. Thank you.” I put my hands in my skirt pockets, thanking the Fates that this skirt had them.
“Well, I’ll be praying for you, and I’m so sorry for your loss.”
And this is why I hadn’t wanted HR to send out an email. Yes, I would be taking a day off for the funeral. HR needed to know that, but I’d specifically asked them not to send out the standard company-wide “someone is grieving, go annoy them” email, and they had anyway.
Jacqui moved on, so I went back to work, my cubicle feeling like a conspicuous cage for the well-meaning vultures to descend upon.
I really don’t know how to cry. I can’t mourn the way the Normies want me to mourn. I just wanted to do my work and get distracted in the mundane grind.
I was halfway through typing a sentence in my report, having spent far too long getting it composed in my head, when I heard a voice over my shoulder.
“Oh my God, I just read the email.” It was Bob from Accounting. “I’m so sorry. How are you doing?”
Just. Let. Me. Work.