The Young Widower, by Eric Smith

His wife’s death changed Johnson's outlook. He chewed but didn't taste his food, and he stared balefully and too long into the eyes of strangers on buses. Alternately, he looked at the floor or at his hands—are these hands mine, am I me, am I alive? His work didn’t suffer, although, some colleagues noted that his attitude seemed less upbeat than before, which is to say that what was once a melancholy love song had become a dirge. Why, he wondered, does the period of mourning approximate the period of courtship—symmetrical time buffers surrounding the marriage itself?