After a night out for Greek food and seeing The Cripple of Inishmaan with Daniel Radcliffe, we came home and shut our door to hear a woman screaming in the hallway of our apartment building. She’s yelling in a language I do not recognize, and I believe she is on the phone because I don’t hear another voice responding to her. After a bit of yelling, she just starts sobbing. The sobbing lasts for what seems like forever, and it’s extremely loud. I can even hear it over my electric toothbrush with the bathroom door shut.

I feel sad for a while and realize that the first thing I think when I hear this person yelling and crying over the phone is, “Did someone close to her just die?”

That was me almost nine months ago.