Danielle Davison

“Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I reread Twelfth Night,” Wren said. “We all know how it ends—happily, of course—but there’s sadness there, too. Olivia has lost a brother. So has Viola, but they handle it very differently. Viola changes her name, her whole identity, and almost immediately falls in love. Olivia shuts herself away from the world, and refuses to let love in at all. Viola is trying desperately to forget her brother. Olivia is maybe remembering him too much. So what do you do? Ignore your grief, or indulge it?” She looked up from the sand and found us, gaze drifting from face to face. Meredith, Alexander, Filippa, me, and finally James. “You all know that Richard refuses to be ignored,” she said, speaking to us, and no one else. “But maybe every day we let grief in, we’ll also let a little bit of it out, and eventually we’ll be able to breathe again. At least, that’s how Shakespeare would tell the story. Hamlet says, Absent thee from felicity awhile. But just awhile. The show’s not over. Now cracks a noble heart. Goodnight. The rest of us must go on.”
― M. L. Rio