All Comments on 'In Between'

Can’t say I enjoyed it, but I liked it very much.

Great description of a dark dank oppressive fall day and the hurt we sometimes must live through.

This was a wonderful story.

It was real.

These things happen to people.

I was that boy, more like in my late 20s, but an older woman

came to me and we enjoyed our time together.

Longer than the story, but the description of autumn is perfect.

Great prose.

Achingly gorgeous. Loved it.

Thank you for sharing this.

Complex grief beautifully imagined, and superbly written.

Most have experiences of loss and grief. Life moves on with or without us. This story felt more like a self indulgent pity party than self reflection on our fragile mortal existance. Sex with the strange young artist seemed gratitous, superfluous and more of a cheap plot device than any type of Introspection of the character. Grief is always an excellent excuse for cheating and must be in the top ten of cliche reasons I deserved to get some strange to make feel better caused my mom died.

My sincerest thanks for the comments, both from those who understand and those who don’t.

Grief, in my experience, is a self indulgent state of existence, shutting the one who’s mourning inside themselves and out of reach.

This is not an enjoyable story, but I hope a few others beside the first commentator might like it regardless. I think that was a good way to phrase the reaction. I didn’t have an intended reaction in mind, when I published this, but if I did, it might well be that one.

Well written even when being sad.

I have trouble with stories that don't tell you almost immediately what the sex of the person who is narrating is. You have to guess and that takes away from the involvement in the story. Eventually we find that the story teller is a woman. Then we have to start guessing who she's grieving and what the circumstances were. Was she happy with her man? Was there a problem at the end beyond the early death? Why is she celebrating her man's very recent death by picking up some young unknown artist and having sex with him? Is that one of stages of grief I'm not familiar with? From a literary point of view I guess it was well written. Did it teach me anything about grief? Not hardly. 3*

Deeply emotional. I lost my partner, and I wasn't expecting to have that pain dragged up, but I completely understand the listlessness and the blind grasping for some sense of relief.

With all due respect to this other guy, he's obviously never lost someone.