3 seconds
3 seconds of silence is usually all people give when they hear someone has died. Someone they didn’t really know well.
3 seconds of awkward silence. A little “oops” because usually the news interrupted whatever they wanted to say next. They want to get on with it.
3 seconds of nothing followed by sombre commentary that’s shallower than the silence. A few “this life you never know”s some “death’s so sudden”s. You know, all the enlightening facts about death for all of 60seconds or less.
3seconds and maybe a few more. How lucky. But the feeling of death is not for the dead. Death must have come so intimate with you for you to feel it every other time you hear of it.
And for us who feel it, it lasts more than 3 seconds.
A lot more than three seconds