A friend asks me how old Edward Said was when he died. I pause, do the little sum, and say: 'He was 67, a few months older than I was.' Then I catch the weird tense. 'Than I am.' Both tenses are true, of course. I'm still 67, but a piece of me is past.

I don't like to use the word 'unbearable' because I'm conscious that too many people are bearing what seem to be unbearable hardships every day. But when, on 25 September, Edward finally succumbed to the illness that had been harrying him for so many years, I couldn't get the word out of my head. What I said, what we all said, was how hard it was to believe that this person so full of life was no longer with us, how much the world needed his courage and example, how hollow our lives would now feel, but what my mind was muttering, like a desperate recitation or an atheist's prayer, was: 'This is unbearable.' Of course it was not unbearable, since I was bearing it, if badly. This is not the worst, if you can say it is the worst, as a famous Shakespearean line has it. But it can get pretty bad even if it's not the worst.

LRB 23 October 2003 | PDF Download