This sentence–“David was a big sweater, and I just remember the sweat marks on his pillow when I changed the cases”–I just feel it in my gut. And then there was this, also from last week. Can the “artistic value” of the work of the widow, the work that specifically pertains to the widow’s widowhood, ever eclipse the grief itself, the heartbreak-response of the audience? Can such work ever obtain its own terms? No, it seems to me. Which is also sort of heartbreaking, or at least one tentacle of the heartbreak.